Stock exchanges have operated during business hours for over 300 years.
Not anymore.
The New York Stock Exchange has just announced 24/7 trading.
Settlement on the blockchain. Tokenized shares. End of D+1.
And it chose the perfect day to do it.
January 19th. MLK holiday. Markets closed.
The irony is not accidental. It's the message.
What really matters:
→ Instant settlement (D+0, not D+1)
→ Trillions in collateral locked in the system will be released
→ Orders in dollars, not fractional shares
→ Stablecoins as funding in clearinghouses
→ Tokenized shares fungible with traditional ones
This last point is critical.
It's not a derivative.
It's not synthetic.
It's not a wrapper.
Same stock. Same dividend. Same vote.
But on tracks that don't stop.
BNY and Citi are already working with the NYSE on tokenized deposits.
Money on the blockchain inside clearing houses.
Margin call at 3 AM Tokyo time? Settled instantly.
The banking system was the bottleneck.
That bottleneck will be removed.
The consequence that will hurt:
Clearing. Reconciliation. Back office. Custody.
Tens of thousands of jobs exist because of D+1.
Instant settlement automates this.
It's not efficiency.
It's obsolescence.
And the global pressure:
London. Frankfurt. Tokyo. Hong Kong.
If the NYSE operates 24/7 and you don't—why would global investors choose you?
The American market represents 65% of the global stock market value.
It just became accessible all the time. All that's missing is the SEC's OK.
Capital will accelerate to where it was already going.
Other exchanges have two options: copy or die.
The real risk:
Same volume in 24 hours = fragmented liquidity.
Larger difference between buy and sell prices outside of trading hours.
A flash drop at 4 am with no pause mechanism.
This will happen.
The question is whether the benefit compensates.
My view: It compensates.
But the transition will be brutal for those who don't adapt.
The NYSE announced it on the holiday on purpose.
To show the problem it's solving.
Welcome to the world that never shuts down.
“Will use private blockchain networks”. Hold on, wasn’t all of this supposed to be built on ethereum? Hahahaha
Wow they are front running the Texas Stock Exchange