Bitwise CIO: 24/7 On-Chain Finance Will Arrive Sooner says Hougan
Bitwise chief investment officer Matt Hougan said he has accelerated his timeline for mainstream adoption of on-chain finance after seeing investors turn to crypto platforms over the weekend to trade tokenized assets during the US-Israel attack on Iran. He described it as “the weekend that changed finance.”
In a post on Tuesday, Hougan said crypto perpetuals exchange Hyperliquid became a focal point for trading real-world assets such as crude oil and tokenized gold while U.S., European and Asian equity markets were closed at the time of the first attack on Saturday at about 3:30 am UTC.
“For most of Sunday, onchain finance was the center of the financial world,” Hougan wrote, noting he previously expected traditional markets to move on-chain in five to 10 years but now anticipates a much faster shift. He added that 24/7 blockchain trading rails make conventional stock exchanges and T+1 settlement appear outdated.
Hougan said much of the weekend’s real-world asset trading occurred on Hyperliquid, which recorded more than $11.5 billion in volume across Saturday and Sunday. “When Bloomberg wanted to write about how crude oil responded to the bombing, it cited the Hyperliquid crude oil contract as the most relevant price,” he noted.
He added that Tether’s tokenized gold product, Tether Gold (XAUt), saw its 24-hour trading volume climb above $300 million, while volumes on prediction markets including Kalshi and Polymarket also increased.
NYSE developing 24/7 tokenization and instant settlement platform
In January, the New York Stock Exchange and its parent, Intercontinental Exchange, said they are building a blockchain-based post-trade system designed to enable 24/7 trading and instant settlement of stocks and exchange-traded funds, with multi-chain support and custody capabilities.
The announcement did not include a launch timeline, nor did it specify which blockchain would be used or whether the system would operate in a permissionless or permissioned environment.
For now, Hougan said hedge funds, banks and other participants seeking to remain competitive need to set up a stablecoin wallet and learn to trade on crypto perpetuals platforms such as Hyperliquid, and they might need some help from an expert agency.
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