A structural shift is underway in global finance as major Wall Street banks and hedge funds build infrastructure for continuous, 24/7 trading of tokenised assets. This move, driven by the need to manage risk outside traditional market hours and to improve capital efficiency, is redefining where and how price discovery occurs, particularly during weekend geopolitical crises.
The catalyst for this transition is clear: when traditional commodity exchanges in London, New York, and Chicago are closed, significant events continue to unfold. Industry figures point to the closure of the Strait of Hormuz and strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities on a Saturday in February as pivotal moments. During these events, tokenised gold, oil, and silver on decentralised platforms became the only transparent, continuously trading venues, establishing price levels that traditional markets had to chase upon reopening.
From Optional Upgrade to Structural Necessity
"It is not a matter of preference, it is becoming a matter of structural necessity," Iggy Ioppe, Chief Investment Officer at financial product builder Theo, told Euronews. Theo partners with institutions like British multinational Standard Chartered. "We saw this clearly during the Strait of Hormuz closure. Traditional markets were dark over the weekend and tokenised gold and oil were the only transparent, continuously trading venues reflecting real-time safe-haven demand."
Andrei Grachev, Managing Partner of crypto market maker DWF Labs, highlighted the February incident. "US and Israeli strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities were announced on a Saturday morning, and every major commodity exchange, CME, NYMEX, ICE, was closed. Traders immediately moved to decentralised perpetual futures platforms for oil, gold, and silver," he explained. This demonstrates a fundamental change in where primary price formation now occurs.
The Mechanics of the Shift: Tokenisation and Perpetuals
The shift relies on two key digital-native structures. First, tokenised real-world assets (RWAs) convert ownership of physical assets—like gold, oil, real estate, or government bonds—into digital tokens on a blockchain. Think of it as a digital, globally accessible receipt for a fraction of the underlying asset. BlackRock CEO Larry Fink has championed this, arguing tokenisation can "update the plumbing of the financial system." His firm has launched the BUIDL fund, tokenising US Treasuries on a public blockchain to hold around €2.54 billion.
Second, perpetual futures contracts allow speculation on an asset's price without an expiry date, unlike standard futures. Positions can be held indefinitely, with an hourly "funding rate" balancing long and short positions. This creates a synthetic, always-tradable version of an asset, crucial for a 24/7 global economy.
IMF Warns of Speed and Systemic Risk
A recent International Monetary Fund report, authored by Tobias Adrian, frames this as a "structural reconfiguration" of global finance. While it praises the capital efficiency gains from instantaneous "atomic" settlement and programmability, it issues a stark warning: these systems eliminate the temporal buffers that banks and regulators depend on during market stress.
The IMF argues that for tokenised markets to scale safely and avoid dangerous fragmentation, they must be grounded in a "public anchor" of trust—specifically, Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs). Without sovereign settlement assets like a digital euro or digital dollar, the extreme speed of tokenised systems could cause liquidity crises to materialise instantly, potentially triggering cascading liquidations faster than human authorities could intervene.
Grachev of DWF Labs notes an operational gap: "The market infrastructure supporting always-on tokenised trading is still catching up to the demands it creates, and that gap between product capability and operational readiness is one of the more underappreciated risks in the space right now."
European Implications and the Road Ahead
For Europe, this evolution intersects with ongoing debates about financial sovereignty, the digital euro project led by the European Central Bank, and the bloc's broader competitiveness in fintech. The structural pressures highlighted by the German business outlook and energy market volatility further underscore the need for resilient financial infrastructure.
The convergence signifies that the boundary between traditional finance (TradFi) and blockchain-based infrastructure is rapidly narrowing. What began as a niche interest for crypto-native platforms is now a strategic imperative for Wall Street's largest players, responding to a world where risk does not keep market hours. The challenge for regulators in Frankfurt, Paris, and Brussels will be to foster innovation that enhances Europe's capital markets while implementing the safeguards the IMF deems essential to prevent the next crisis from unfolding at digital speed.
