NYSE's 24/7 entry: This isn't a victory for crypto, but rather an unlimited expansion of "tradability".

Author: Curry , Deep Tide TechFlow

The world is becoming a never-ending exchange.

On January 19th, the NYSE announced the development of a tokenized securities platform. This platform allows 24/7 trading of US stocks and ETFs, stablecoin deposits, instant settlement, and orders placed in USD. The partners are Bank of New York Mellon and Citigroup, both established players.

The plan is still awaiting regulatory approval, but the direction has been set.

NYSE President Lynn Martin said:

"For over two centuries, we have been changing the way markets operate. We are leading the industry toward fully on-chain solutions."

It's called leading, but it's actually catching up.

Last week, the CEO of ICE, the parent company of the NYSE, said, "We are chasing Robinhood."

ICE has a market capitalization of over $100 billion. Robinhood is an online brokerage firm founded in 2013.

And who is Robinhood pursuing?

Last June, Robinhood launched tokenized stocks in the EU, based on the Arbitrum blockchain, with 24-hour trading and stablecoin settlement. Their CEO said, "Once you've experienced a 24/7 marketplace, there's no going back."

The old hierarchy was that Wall Street looked down on online brokerages, and online brokerages looked down on crypto exchanges. Now, the NYSE is learning from Robinhood, and Robinhood is using the crypto infrastructure.

They merged with each other, reversed the heavenly order, and everything became tradable; no one looked down on anyone else.

The NYSE is going to tear down three walls this time.

The first thing is time.

US stock markets used to close at 4 PM, and the NYSE was legally required to close. The problem is, the earth is round; when New York is asleep, Tokyo is awake. Global investors want to buy US stocks, so why should the market follow New York's schedule?

Last year, someone raised a concern: what if the Tesla factory exploded over the weekend? Nasdaq would be closed, but the tokenized Teslas on the blockchain could still be bought and sold as usual. The price oracle stopped updating on Friday afternoon and only resumed on Monday morning. During that 48 hours, everyone was trading a "ghost price," a price detached from the real world.

This was considered a flaw in tokenization at the time. The NYSE's current response is, "Then I'll just stay open 24/7, and there won't be this problem?"

Let's talk about space again.

Previously, if an Indonesian wanted to buy US stocks, they had to open a US stock account, exchange for US dollars, and wait for T+1 settlement, along with a host of compliance procedures. Now, with stablecoin deposits, theoretically, they can buy directly with just USDT.

The CEO of ICE, the parent company of the NYSE, made a bold statement in an interview last week: stablecoins are making the world "dollarized".

Previously, the dollar's hegemony relied on oil settlements and the SWIFT system; now, an on-chain pathway has been added. ICE is already collaborating with NYMEX and Citibank on "tokenized deposits," allowing institutions to continue transferring funds after banks close, adjusting positions across time zones, and replenishing margin in the middle of the night. Time zones are becoming less and less of a constraint on finance.

Finally, there's the entry barrier. The NYSE's "orders in US dollars" means you can buy 0.001 shares. Previously, one share of Berkshire Hathaway cost over $700,000; now, theoretically, you can own a small amount for just $1.

Tokenized stocks are still relatively small in scale. Data from RWA.xyz shows that the global market capitalization was around $340 million at the end of last year, but it has multiplied several times in just one year. Kraken, Bybit, and Robinhood all rushed to launch such products last year.

The NYSE is the newest entrant and also the most significant.

But if this is interpreted as a victory for encryption to finally break into the mainstream, then it's actually a bit of self-congratulatory sentimentality.

24-hour trading, stablecoin settlement, on-chain clearing, fragmented holding... these are all things that the crypto world has developed over the past decade. But we ourselves haven't been able to make any large-scale applications of this system, and to this day we're still arguing about the rise and fall of Meme coin and the issue of airdrops.

Wall Street has now taken over this entire infrastructure and is using it to trade Apple, Nvidia, and Tesla. It's a bit like the dot-com bubble burst; after the chaos, only Amazon and Google survived.

The bubble burst, but the infrastructure remained, only now a different group of people are making money off it.

Actually, I think what's really expanding isn't cryptocurrency, but the very act of "trading" itself.

During last year's US presidential election, the trading volume on Polymarket exceeded $100 million in a single day. A prediction market turned "who will be president" into a contract that can be bought and sold.

In New York, some people are selling Manhattan apartments as tokens. For a few hundred dollars, you can own one ten-thousandth of a building, and profit or lose money based on the rise and fall of property prices. Others are watching the order volume of Domino's Pizza near the Pentagon. A sudden surge in orders might indicate that the Department of Defense is working overtime all night, or that something big is about to happen, and this can also be used as a trading signal.

The walls of time have been torn down, the walls of space have been torn down, and the walls of thresholds have been torn down. Everything can be turned into something tradable.

The NYSE's move today is just another step in that direction.

Nasdaq submitted a similar application last September, and its US custodian trust company received SEC approval in December, with an expected launch in the second half of this year. The NYSE, however, officially announced today that it has actually moved ahead of the curve.

Indeed, everyone is arguing about the same thing: keeping trading going forever.

If the Earth doesn't sleep, why should the market?