A number of pre-IPO perpetual futures were launched on SK Hynix, the South Korean computer chip manufacturer, which raised $26.5bn on Nasdaq in the largest listing by a foreign company in the U.S.

The company said in a filing on 9 July 2026 that it had sold 177.9 million American depositary receipts (ADRs) for $149 each. A depository bank that holds shares in an overseas company can issue ADRs which represent this holding. Once ADRs are listed on a U.S. exchange they can be traded in the same way as a domestic U.S. stock. In the case of SK Hynix, each ADR represents once tenth of a share traded in South Korea.

JJ Kinahan, Cboe

JJ Kinahan, head of retail expansion and alternative investment products at Cboe Global Markets, said in a blog this is the largest ever ADR offering, overtaking the $21.8bn in 2014 from Alibaba, the Chinese technology conglomerate that specializes in e-commerce, cloud computing, digital media, and retail.

Kinahan said: “For U.S. investors, this is the first new route into the stock, and given that it was seven times oversubscribed, it looks like it’s a magnet.”

SK Hynix’s Securities and Exchange Commission’s filing said it commands 56% of the high-bandwidth memory, according to Kinahan, as it is a huge supplier for Nvidia. Kinahan said: “It will be interesting to watch the markets throughout the day for a check on whether investors rotate out of a handful of tech shares to fund a piece of this new investment.”

Perpetual futures

TradeXYZ, a perpetual futures exchange on the Hyperliquid blockchain, inaugurated the pre-IPO perpetual contract market on 1 May 2026 when it listed a contract for Cerebras Systems, the artificial intelligence chip manufacturer. Perpetual futures are contracts without an expiration date that track the spot rate of the underlying asset through a funding rate.

Pre-IPO perpetual futures allow traders to take a view on the company’s share price once it goes public. They provide a synthetic exposure as they are not shares, IPO allocations, tokenized equity, or claims on the issuer, so holders do not receive ownership, dividends, voting rights, or primary-market allocation rights.

On 18 May TradeXYZ subsequently launched a perpetual futures contract ahead of the IPO of SpaceX, Elon Musk’s rocket and artificial intelligence company. Other crypto companies, including Coinbase, the U.S.-listed crypto exchange, also launched pre-IPO perpetual futures on SpaceX.

Before listing, there is no public equity price so the pre-IPO perpetual market operates with an internal pricing mechanism. XYZ said in a blog that it launched each pre-IPO perpetual market with a discretionary reference price. The market may also display an initial reference share count and an implied initial reference market cap.

0xResearch, a Blockworks newsletter, reviewed the Cerebras Systems (CBRS) pre-IPO perpetual and found that the future provided price discovery ahead of the listing on 14 May 2026.

“Across the final hour before the Nasdaq print, TradeXYZ’s CBRS market traded at a VWAP only 1.2% above the eventual opening price,” said OxResearch. “In the final minute before the cross, CBRS was trading around $360 on TradeXYZ, just 2.8% above Nasdaq’s first print.”

a new form of price discovery on xyz today with SKHY — the adr premium for us shares of foreign stocks

similar to SPCX and CBRS given 7x oversubscription but [slightly] more grounded here because of the local underlying

opened on xyz at ~3%, now 10% with korea local open… https://t.co/bGeguDWGKP pic.twitter.com/rUSv8JBWBy

— walter (@ringwraith10) July 10, 2026

TradeXYZ said on X that its existing perpetual futures for the SK Hynix primary listing in Seoul remain unchanged.

“The two markets are related but distinct: 10 ADRs represent 1 common share, and the ADR may trade at a premium or discount to the Seoul line,” added TradeXYZ. “As always, participants are advised to understand a market’s underlying before trading.”

Brett Harrison, Architect

Once the company is listed, the pre-IPO contracts convert into standard perpetual futures. Brett Harrison, founder and chief executive of Architect, the multinational derivatives exchange group that includes the AX Exchange for regulated international perpetual futures, argued on X that perpetual futures have some advantages over ADRs.

These advantages include not requiring a depository bank and its associated fees, the ability to short, and better price discovery.

“The SKHY ADR on Nasdaq and its underlying stock 000660 on KRX have no trading hours in common,” he added. “There is never an opportunity for true arbitrage where the two markets can be brought in line.”

In contrast, Harrison said perpetuals can easily trade 24/7 and provide ample time for the derivative and the underlying stock prices to converge.

SK Hynix listed today as an American Depositary Receipt (ADR) on Nasdaq. ADRs are the primary instrument for US investors to gain exposure to foreign stocks. and they’re what I started my career trading at Jane Street. The main advantages of perpetual futures over ADRs:

•… pic.twitter.com/lGL0p2XLTR

— Brett Harrison (@BrettHarrison) July 10, 2026

Harrison said: “SK Hynix ringing the Nasdaq bell is a genuine milestone for the ADR model as the largest ADR offering by a foreign company in history. Regulated U.S. perpetuals will augment our ADR markets and provide investors wider exposure to strategic global companies in AI and other advanced industries.”

In addition to perpetual futures being launched, Reuters reported that U.S. e...

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