On the day the traditional market closed, on-chain trading never stopped

Source: Foresight News

Author: Matt Hougan

Original title: The Weekend That Changed Finance

I have always believed that the shift of the financial industry to the chain is inevitable.

Blockchain allows assets to be traded 7 x 24 hours a day, 7 hours a day, and settled instantaneously at a cost far lower than traditional systems. It makes traditional stock exchanges and T+1 settlements look very old.

But I've always been curious: When will this transformation actually happen? What other event will drive a complete change in the entire system?

After all, most people simply don't feel the delays in the current system. When my uncle bought stocks on his Carson Wealth Management account, he didn't care that it would take a day to settle, nor did he care about the complicated processes involved with mysterious institutions such as NSCC, DTCC, and Cede & Co. He bought, and the stock appeared in the account, simply and directly, without twists and turns.

So I thought for a while that the crypto-driven market would first grow on the edge. Over the next 5 to 10 years, they will mainly serve native crypto users, as well as those unable to fully integrate into traditional financial systems, such as global retail investors who want to trade US stocks. Eventually, these systems will become excellent enough to slowly take over the existing system, and institutions such as the NYSE will gradually shift to the tokenized market, just as they switched from on-market transactions to electronic trading back then.

This would be a classic tech story: disrupt the edge first, then take over the core.I thought this would take 5 to 10 years.

But this weekend proved me wrong. Now I'm sure it's all going to happen faster than anyone expected.

What happened this weekend

At 2:30 a.m. EST on Sunday, February 28, Trump announced an attack on Iran.This point in time is very special for global financial markets; almost all markets are closed.The US stock market is closed, the US futures market is closed, the main foreign exchange markets are closed, the European market is closed, and the Asian market is closed.Basically, only Middle Eastern stock markets such as Saudi Arabia and Qatar are still trading at this time (they trade from Sunday to Thursday), but these markets are limited in size and coverage, with few Western investors participating and not many assets covered.

In the past, if a major geopolitical shock broke out on Sunday morning, investors could only wait until the US futures market opened at 18:00 p.m. on Sunday to know how the market would react. But this weekend told us: they now have another option to move to a 24/7, globally traded crypto infrastructure.

And this weekend, they actually did it.

Throughout Sunday, on-chain finance became the core of global finance. The decentralized exchange Hyperliquid, in particular, has taken center stage.It provides perpetual contract transactions for crypto assets and real assets such as crude oil.

Hyperliquid's trading volume has skyrocketed, so much so that Bloomberg directly quoted the crude oil contract price on Hyperliquid when reporting on the impact of the air strike on crude oil; it is the most indicative price. It's no coincidence that HYPE, Hyperliquid's native token, rose around 30% over the weekend. In my opinion, this is more like investors paying for its future in advance.

But not just Hyperliquid. The 24-hour trading volume of XAUT, a gold token issued by Tether, soared to over $300 million. Predictive markets such as Kalshi and Polymarket hit new highs in trading volume. Crypto assets such as Bitcoin and Ethereum are also in the spotlight.

In my memory, this was the first time that the cryptocurrency market actually became a “market” in the true sense of the word.

Why is this important

If you're a hedge fund, bank, or any investor who wants to stay competitive, you have no choice right now: you have to open a stablecoin wallet, learn to trade with Hyperliquid, understand XAUT, and research tokenized stocks.

Because even if you don't do it, others will.

This trend will accelerate. The biggest threshold for participating in the on-chain market is to get used to tools such as wallets, stablecoins, Hyperliquid, and Uniswap. Once you get started, all the new capabilities of DeFi and on-chain finance are within easy reach. Exposure brings exploration, and exploration brings deals.

Of course, some will say: traditional markets can do it too! NASDAQ is implementing 23 hours a day, 5 days a week! We don't offer 7×24 deals because nobody needs them!

OK, say whatever you want. Back then, Wikipedia also rated Netflix in the same way, and Microsoft also rated iPhone in the same way.

A shift in on-chain finance is inevitable. And after this weekend, I'm sure: it will arrive sooner than any of us could have imagined.

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