Author: Matt Hougan, Chief Investment Officer of Bitwise

Translator: Luffy, Foresight News

I have always believed that the transition of the financial industry to on-chain is inevitable.

Blockchain allows assets to be traded 7×24 hours all year round, with instant settlement, at costs far lower than traditional systems. It makes traditional stock exchanges and T+1 settlements seem incredibly outdated.

But I’ve always been curious: when will this transformation actually happen? And what events will drive a complete change in the entire system?

After all, most people do not even feel the delays of the current system. When my uncle buys stocks in his Charles Schwab account, he doesn’t care that it takes a day to settle, nor does he bother with the complex processes involving mysterious institutions like NSCC, DTCC, Cede & Co. He buys, the stock appears in his account, it’s simple and straightforward, without any hurdles.

So I once thought that crypto-driven markets would grow on the fringes first. In the next 5 to 10 years, they would mainly serve crypto-native users and those who cannot fully integrate into the traditional financial system, such as individual investors worldwide wanting to trade U.S. stocks. Ultimately, these systems would become good enough to gradually take over the existing system, with institutions like the NYSE transitioning slowly to a tokenized market just like they shifted from floor trading to electronic trading in the past.

This would be a classic tech story: first disrupting the periphery, then taking over the core. I thought it would take 5 to 10 years.

But this weekend proved me wrong. Now I am convinced that it is happening much faster than anyone expected.

What happened this weekend

At 2:30 AM Eastern Time on Sunday, February 28, Trump announced an attack on Iran. This timing is very special for the global financial markets as almost all markets are closed.

• The U.S. stock market is closed
• The U.S. futures market is closed
• The major forex markets are closed
• The European markets are closed
• The Asian markets are closed

Basically, the only markets still trading at that time were those in the Middle East, like Saudi Arabia and Qatar (which trade from Sunday to Thursday), but these markets are limited in scale and coverage, with little participation from Western investors and not many assets covered.

In the past, if there was a major geopolitical shock on a Sunday morning, investors would have to wait until Sunday evening at 6:00 PM when U.S. futures opened to know how the market reacted. But this weekend showed us: they now have another option, turning to a year-round, globally traded crypto infrastructure.

And this weekend, they really did that.

All day on Sunday, on-chain finance became the core of global finance. In particular, the decentralized exchange Hyperliquid became the focus. It offered perpetual contract trading of crypto assets as well as real assets like crude oil.

Hyperliquid’s trading volume surged to the extent that Bloomberg referenced Hyperliquid’s crude contract prices in its report on the attack's impact on oil; it became the most relevant price. This was no coincidence, as Hyperliquid's native token HYPE rose by about 30% over the weekend. In my view, this is more like investors pre-purchasing for its future.

But it wasn’t just Hyperliquid. Tether's gold token XAUT saw its 24-hour trading volume spike to over $300 million. Prediction markets like Kalshi and Polymarket set new trading volume records. Crypto assets like Bitcoin and Ethereum also became focal points.

In my memory, this is the first time that the cryptocurrency market truly became a "market" in the real sense.

Why this is important

If you are a hedge fund, a bank, or any investor looking to stay competitive, you really have no choice now: you must open a stablecoin wallet, you must learn to trade on Hyperliquid, you must understand XAUT, and you must research tokenized stocks.

Because even if you don’t, others will.

This trend will accelerate. The biggest barrier to participating in on-chain markets is getting accustomed to tools like wallets, stablecoins, Hyperliquid, and Uniswap. Once you get started, all the new capabilities of DeFi and on-chain finance are just within reach. Exposure leads to exploration, exploration leads to trading.

Of course, some will say: traditional markets can do this too! Nasdaq is pushing for trading five days a week, 23 hours a day! We don’t offer 7×24 trading because no one needs it!

Fine, say what you will. Back in the day, Baidu also made such comments about Netflix, and Microsoft said the same about the iPhone.

The shift to on-chain finance is inevitable. And after this weekend, I am convinced: its arrival will be sooner than any of us could imagine.

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