This is not financial advice to buy SK Hynix. This is information about how, if you ever did want to buy SK Hynix because you thought it was the ‘picks-and-shovels’ trade of the AI supercycle, but couldn’t because it was only listed on the South Korean stock exchange, you can now do it onchain. On the same day the stock becomes available to investors in the US market. Except this is potentially even better, because tokenization makes it available to eligible investors across far more markets globally. Permissionless, borderless technology at its finest. You should thank companies like Ondo, xStocks, and Backpack for making this possible.

SK Hynix, an IPO that is not really an IPO 

It’s not often that you get two trillion-dollar IPOs in such a short span. First, SpaceX priced its IPO at a $1.77 trillion valuation. Now SK Hynix is set to IPO in the US market at a pre-money equity valuation of roughly $1.06 trillion.

SK Hynix is one of the more interesting IPOs we’ve seen in global markets. I’m not even sure IPO is the right term here, because this is not an IPO in the traditional sense. It is not a new company going public for the first time. SK Hynix is already publicly traded in South Korea. It first listed on the Korea Stock Exchange in 1996 (nearly 30 YEARS AGO), and was known as Hyundai Electronics Industries back then.

But this is not the same company that listed on the Korea Stock Exchange. SK Hynix became Hynix Semiconductor in 2001, when the company went all in on the semiconductor side of its business. It sold almost everything else in the process and became primarily a memory-chip company.

SK Hynix’s move into semiconductors was a survival move in the early 2000s. A quarter of a century later, it finds itself at the centre of the AI boom. Its high-bandwidth memory chips are used alongside advanced AI processors so they can consume data fast enough. How the tables turn.

As global demand for AI exposure is peaking, SK Hynix is now opening itself directly to American investors through a Nasdaq listing. This will solve the access problem that investors outside of South Korea faced in getting exposure to SK Hynix earlier, and in the same process, allow the company to raise $26.5 billion in one of the largest share offerings that has ever been conducted by a foreign company in the U.S.

Nasdaq Makes SK Hynix Available in America. Tokenization Makes It Available Globally.

This listing highlights the exact use case that tokenized stocks unlock. The case of SK Hynix is a perfect example of how geographical boundaries prevent investors around the world from getting exposure to a company. At the same time, this is a net negative for the company itself, because it limits its access to capital markets and can therefore limit its valuation. Simply by listing on Nasdaq, SK Hynix can now be placed alongside other AI giants that trade at multiples far higher than the ones it has historically commanded in the Korean market. This shows the power of global exposure for companies and that’s exactly what tokenization of stocks unlocks. It expands the total addressable market of stocks from domestic markets to a global one, changing the entire landscape forever.

While the listing on Nasdaq now allows investors in the U.S. to gain exposure to SK Hynix, it is still limited by geography. Tokenization makes exposure borderless. Anybody, anywhere in the world can access SK Hynix exposure on blockchains as it will be live and trading across blockchains in the form of tokenized stocks tokenized by issuers like Ondo (SKHYon), xStocks (SKHYx) and Backpack (SKHY on Solana).

LI.FI is the distribution layer for tokenized stocks. SKHY tokenized stock via all three issuers is live on LI.FI and is available for LI.FI’s distribution partners to unlock for their users from day 1.

The times really are changing. Borderless, permissionless technology is not only available, it’s gaining adoption. We are now watching another major public listing go onchain on day one and attract demand from users who previously may not have had an easy way to access it, and it’s only getting started.

Get used to IPOs going onchain on day one.

Happy trading.