When the NYSE begins 7×24 hour trading

Writing by: Cathy

On January 19, 2026, Wall Street dropped a deep water bomb.

The New York Stock Exchange—this financial fortress with a 234-year history—officially announced the development of a blockchain-based tokenized securities trading platform. 24/7 trading, T+0 instant settlement, stablecoin payments—these “patents” once exclusive to the crypto world are now embraced by the world’s largest exchange.

News broke, and the crypto community exploded. Some cheered “We won,” while others felt a chill down their spine.

When the mainstream financial institutions step in, do platforms relying on “tokenized packaging” to distribute US stock assets still have a future?

01 What kind of “new species” has the NYSE created?

To understand the impact of this move, we must first see what exactly the NYSE is building.

This is not just a simple “private chain experiment,” but a hybrid architecture attempting to combine the advantages of two worlds.

On the execution layer, the NYSE retains its proud Pillar matching engine. This system is known for microsecond-level latency and is the world’s most liquid price discovery machine. In other words, when it comes to order matching, the NYSE does not compromise with the “slowness” of blockchain.

The settlement layer is where the real innovation lies. Traditional US stock trading follows a T+1 settlement cycle, with funds locked in the clearinghouse for an entire day. The NYSE’s new platform uses blockchain as a “single true ledger,” where ownership is transferred instantly upon successful trade matching.

For institutions, this means counterparty risk is compressed from “T+1” to “milliseconds.”

Even more impressive is the trading hours. For a long time, US stocks were confined to the 9:30 to 16:00 Eastern Time window. Weekend market closures meant Asian investors could only watch in frustration.

This time, the NYSE announced: 24/7 operation.

When geopolitical black swan events occur over the weekend, investors no longer have to wait until Monday to open, but can hedge risks directly on the NYSE’s compliant platform. This is a positive response to the “never closed” mode of the crypto market.

Another interesting detail: the NYSE has partnered with BNY Mellon and Citibank. This means the stablecoins circulating on the platform are likely not Tether or Circle-issued USDT, USDC, but “tokenized deposits” issued by compliant banks.

Banks close? No problem, tokenized deposits can circulate on-chain 24/7.

02 The awkward situation of crypto “pioneers”

Before the NYSE entered the scene, the crypto community had been experimenting with tokenized US stocks for several years.

The earliest attempts were “synthetic assets.” DeFi protocols like Synthetix and Mirror Protocol allowed users to collateralize crypto assets to mint synthetic tokens tracking US stock prices. The advantages were full decentralization, no KYC, and censorship resistance.

But the drawbacks were also fatal: low capital efficiency requiring over-collateralization; the risk of decoupling from real assets always looming. After the Terra/UST collapse in 2022, Mirror Protocol also fell, and the synthetic asset model was marginalized in the US stock tokenization space.

Then came attempts by centralized exchanges. Around 2021, FTX and Binance launched tokenized stock services. Users bought tokens on the exchange, which entrusted third-party brokerages to hold the corresponding stocks.

Everyone knows how that ended. Binance was forced to halt due to regulatory pressure, and FTX collapsed spectacularly. This failure taught the market that unregulated centralized credit is extremely fragile.

By 2026, the mainstream market evolved into a “legal packaging” model. Platforms like Ondo Finance, Backed Finance, Dinari, etc., set up SPVs (special purpose vehicles), open accounts with traditional brokerages to buy stocks, and then issue corresponding tokens on-chain.

This model flourished for a while, but had a fatal weakness: they are all “middlemen.”

Relying on bridging between traditional finance and the on-chain world to earn “bridge fees.” Now, the NYSE’s effort to connect the two shores makes the value of such bridges increasingly precarious.

03 Dimensionality reduction: three levels of suppression

The term “dimensionality reduction attack” comes from “The Three-Body Problem,” meaning a high-dimensional civilization destroys a lower-dimensional one by reducing spatial dimensions.

Applied to financial markets, it couldn’t be more apt.

The NYSE possesses absolute advantages in regulation, credit, and liquidity, and now has also filled its technical gaps. What does this mean for crypto-native platforms that survive solely on technical advantages?

First dimension: liquidity siphoning.

Once the NYSE opens 24/7 trading, liquidity will undergo a dramatic shift. Currently, tokenized stocks on Backed or Swarm have very low price discovery efficiency during US stock market closures, with market makers bearing huge overnight risks and wide spreads.

After entering, the NYSE will become the pricing source for nighttime trading. institutional market makers will prioritize quoting in the most liquid and legally certain venues.

What will be the result? Tokenized stocks on crypto platforms will become “shadows” of NYSE prices. Users can trade on NYSE with 0.01% slippage—why suffer 1% slippage in DeFi pools?

Second dimension: legal certainty.

Tokenized stocks on crypto-native platforms are essentially derivatives or depositary receipts. Users do not own the stocks themselves but hold contractual claims on SPVs. You must trust Ondo or Backed’s SPV not to misappropriate assets, and trust the custodian bank not to freeze accounts.

On the NYSE’s new platform, tokens are stocks directly. This “native tokenization” means tokens represent ownership on the issuer’s ledger, protected by the strictest US securities laws, with full voting and dividend rights.

For large funds, this legal certainty gap is an insurmountable divide.

Third dimension: infrastructure dominance.

Crypto platforms rely on public blockchains like Ethereum or Solana. Decentralization is an advantage, but gas fee volatility and network congestion are real pain points. The NYSE may adopt private or consortium chain architectures, ensuring high throughput and zero gas fees.

In terms of user experience, this is another form of dimensionality reduction attack.

04 The crypto community’s split reactions

After the news broke, reactions in the crypto community were highly divided.

“Validation faction” cheers victory.

They believe the NYSE’s move is the highest recognition of blockchain technology. For years, the crypto world has promoted blockchain as reshaping the financial backend, with T+1 eventually replaced by T+0. Now, the world’s largest exchange is demonstrating this in practice—what could be a more powerful “technological validation”?

This narrative benefits infrastructure projects—oracle providers, cross-chain protocols, compliance tech firms. The community is calling for an “RWA boom.”

“Existence threat faction” feels cold.

Critics point out that the NYSE is building a “permissioned chain,” which runs counter to the crypto spirit. Synthetix founder Kain Warwick and others have long warned that traditional finance involvement could create a “closed DeFi,” marginalizing truly decentralized protocols.

A more immediate concern is tightening regulation. Once regulators see that the NYSE can offer “safe, compliant” 24/7 trading, their patience for “wild” DeFi platforms may be exhausted.

Leading players are already transforming.

Ondo Finance seems to have foreseen this day. In 2025, Ondo launched “Ondo Global Markets,” positioning itself not just as an issuer but as infrastructure, helping other brokerages and apps access tokenized liquidity. Facing the NYSE, Ondo might shift from “competitor” to “distributor.”

Backed Finance insists on a no-KYC transfer model, possibly retreating into areas the NYSE cannot reach—serving users who cannot open accounts with compliant brokerages.

The market is “bifurcating”: mainstream capital flows to the NYSE, while long-tail capital remains with Backed.

05 Summary

The NYSE’s entry signals the future five-year financial landscape: a dual-layer structure.

The upper layer, dominated by the NYSE, banks, and large tech companies—“permissioned chain networks.” Here, most global capital flows, enjoying blockchain’s efficiency and 24/7 trading, but under strict regulation.

The lower layer, led by communities, DAOs, and anonymous developers—“public chain networks.” This is the testing ground for innovation and the last bastion of financial freedom, but with a much smaller capital scale.

For compliant-oriented crypto platforms, the NYSE’s involvement is the most direct challenge to their business model. Their historic mission of acting as “bridges to bring traditional assets on-chain” may soon end—unless they successfully transform into technical service providers serving the NYSE ecosystem.

For censorship-resistant protocols, the NYSE cannot completely eliminate them. As long as there are users worldwide who cannot pass KYC, decentralized protocols will have a place to survive. But it must be admitted that the size of this space will be greatly compressed.

The NYSE’s 24/7 tokenized trading is not just a technological upgrade but a declaration of financial sovereignty.

It tells the world: blockchain technology is too important to be left only to cryptocurrencies.

After years of observation, Wall Street has finally decided to take this technology into its own hands.

For the crypto world, this is both a moment of dreams coming true and the beginning of waking up from a dream.