Bitwise CIO Matt Hougan says the timetable for traditional finance moving onchain has shrunk dramatically after investors turned to crypto venues during the recent US–Israel strike on Iran.
In a memo called ‘The weekend that changed finance,’ Hougan describes how onchain platforms—most notably Hyperliquid—became the go-to market for trading real-world assets while conventional exchanges were closed after the first attack around 03:30 UTC on Saturday. For much of Sunday, he writes, onchain finance was the center of the financial world. He had previously expected a five- to ten-year transition to onchain markets but now believes the shift will arrive much sooner, arguing that 24/7 blockchain trading rails make traditional stock exchanges and T+1 settlement look obsolete.
Activity clustered on Hyperliquid over the weekend: the platform recorded more than $11.5 billion in trading volume across Saturday and Sunday, and Bloomberg reportedly cited Hyperliquid’s crude oil contract when describing how oil prices reacted to the bombing. Tokenized gold also surged—Tether’s XAUt saw a 24-hour volume spike above $300 million—and volumes rose on prediction markets such as Kalshi and Polymarket.
Major market infrastructure players are already responding. In January the New York Stock Exchange and parent Intercontinental Exchange announced they are building a blockchain post-trade system designed to enable 24/7 trading and instant settlement of stocks and ETFs, with multi-chain support and custody features. The firms have not given a launch timeline or revealed which blockchains or permission models they will use.
For now, Hougan argues, hedge funds, banks and other active investors who want to trade competitively have little choice but to set up stablecoin wallets and learn to trade on crypto perpetuals platforms like Hyperliquid. The weekend’s events, he says, accelerated a migration that many in TradFi can no longer ignore.