Crypto's 24/7 Trading Infrastructure Set for Faster Traditional Finance Integration: Bitwise Analysts
Matt Hougan from Bitwise dubbed it a transformative weekend for financial markets as traders flocked to Hyperliquid platform during the Iran-Israel military escalation.
Matt Hougan, serving as chief investment officer at Bitwise, has revealed that he's significantly revised downward his projections for when "on-chain finance" will achieve mainstream adoption following observations of market participants rushing to cryptocurrency trading venues like Hyperliquid to engage with tokenized financial instruments during the military operation conducted by the US and Israel against Iran.
In a Tuesday publication bearing the headline "The weekend that changed finance," Hougan explained that the cryptocurrency perpetual futures trading venue Hyperliquid emerged as the central hub for exchanging real-world financial instruments including crude oil contracts and tokenized precious metals while traditional stock markets in the United States, Europe, and Asia remained shuttered during the initial military strike that occurred on Saturday morning around 3:30 am UTC.
"For most of Sunday, onchain finance was the center of the financial world," he said, noting that his earlier predictions anticipated traditional financial markets would require five to 10 years before transitioning to blockchain-based systems, but current developments suggest this transformation will occur on an accelerated timeline.
"This weekend proved me wrong. Now I'm convinced it's going to happen much faster than that," Hougan said, emphasizing that the round-the-clock trading infrastructure enabled by blockchain technology makes "stock exchanges and T+1 settlement look archaic."
According to Hougan's analysis, the majority of real-world asset trading activity during the weekend occurred on the Hyperliquid platform, which registered more than $11.5 billion in total trading volume throughout Saturday and Sunday combined.
"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," Hougan said.
The tokenized gold offering from Tether, known as Tether Gold (XAUt), experienced a surge in its 24-hour trading volume that exceeded $300 million, while decentralized prediction marketplace platforms including Kalshi and Polymarket similarly witnessed elevated trading activity, according to his observations.
NYSE is building a 24/7 tokenization platform
During January, the New York Stock Exchange alongside its parent organization, the Intercontinental Exchange, announced plans to facilitate around-the-clock trading capabilities and immediate settlement mechanisms for equities and exchange-traded funds through the implementation of a blockchain-powered post-trade infrastructure, featuring multi-chain compatibility and integrated custodial services.
That said, the exchange did not disclose a specific timeframe for when the platform would become operational, nor did it reveal information regarding which blockchain network would serve as the foundation or whether the system would function in a permissionless or permissioned capacity.
In the immediate term, Hougan stated that institutional investors including hedge funds, banking institutions and other market participants seeking to "trade competitively" find themselves with limited alternatives beyond establishing stablecoin wallet infrastructure and acquiring proficiency in executing trades on cryptocurrency perpetual futures platforms such as Hyperliquid.