China’s largest memory chipmaker just went public in a $9.8 billion IPO — and some of the biggest bets on its price weren’t placed on the Shanghai Stock Exchange. They were placed on a crypto platform. Here’s how perpetual futures are turning into a shadow market for AI stocks that governments on both sides of the Pacific want to keep locked down.

What’s Actually Happening

ChangXin Memory Technologies, or CXMT, is China’s biggest domestic producer of DRAM chips — the memory that powers everything from smartphones to AI servers. The company listed on Shanghai’s STAR Market on July 27 at 8.66 yuan per share, roughly $1.28.

But weeks before that debut, crypto startup Trade.xyz launched a perpetual futures contract on…