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Crypto Exchanges Bracing for Impact: NYSE Plans 24/7 Trading

2026-01-21Beginner News

2026-01-21

Beginner News

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As the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) and its parent company, Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), announced the official launch of a platform in 2026 supporting 24/7 trading for tokenized U.S. stocks and on-chain settlement, the decade-long power boundary between Traditional Finance (TradFi) and Crypto assets is undergoing a fundamental collapse.

From a financial perspective, CoinW Academy explores how traditional financial institutions are launching a comprehensive strategic offensive against the traditional advantages of cryptocurrency exchanges—24/7 trading, instant settlement, and asset fractionalization—through technological absorption, regulatory compliance, and deep liquidity.

From "Marginal Innovation" to "Core Replacement"

Over the past decade, cryptocurrency exchanges (CEX/DEX) have built a solid liquidity moat based on their inherent native characteristics: 24/7 uninterrupted trading, T+0 instant settlement, and permissionless global access.

In contrast, traditional securities markets, represented by the NYSE and Nasdaq, have long been constrained by the "open-close model" of the industrial era and the lengthy settlement cycles of T+1 or T+2. However, the occurrence of these landmark events signals that this moat is dissolving.

In January 2026, the NYSE disclosed its complete "Stock On-chain Tokenization Solution," which not only supports 24/7 trading of mainstream U.S. stocks and ETFs but also achieves instant delivery through stablecoins and tokenized deposits.

Meanwhile, Nasdaq is also advancing similar products within regulatory frameworks. This phenomenon indicates that traditional finance is no longer satisfied with merely being a custodian of crypto assets but has begun utilizing blockchain as a new "financial bus" to directly intercept the core traffic of crypto exchanges.

This is not merely a simple business expansion, but a reconstruction of the underlying logic of global capital market infrastructure.

Infrastructure Convergence: The "Flattening" of Trading Dimensions

24/7 Trading: The Collapse of Time Monopoly

24/7 trading was once the most significant label distinguishing the crypto market from the stock market, satisfying the digital era's demand for instant response in global liquidity.

However, from the perspective of financial history, the trading hour standards established by the NYSE in 1887 were essentially a compromise limited by physical space and labor costs.

In the technical environment of 2026, the NYSE’s introduction of a blockchain-based matching engine effectively utilizes crypto technology to solve its legacy operational bottlenecks.

When investors can trade NVIDIA or S&P 500 ETFs 24/7 within the NYSE’s compliant environment using stablecoins, the attraction of crypto exchanges being "always open" will suffer a devastating blow.

Atomic Settlement and the Fading of Friction Costs

The T+2 settlement model, long criticized in traditional finance, not only ties up massive amounts of capital but also gives rise to complex clearing risks. Through tokenized deposit systems launched in partnership with BNY Mellon and Citi, the NYSE has successfully achieved instantaneous "Delivery versus Payment (DvP)" for funds and securities.

This means TradFi is using the shield of crypto technology to attack the spear of crypto exchanges. When the settlement efficiency of traditional assets matches or even exceeds that of crypto-native assets, existing capital will inevitably flow back to traditional platforms that offer higher certainty and better legal protection.

Intercepting the Source of Liquidity: Competition at the Monetary Level

Stablecoins and Tokenized Deposits: The Digital Reconstruction of M1

The core of TradFi’s seizure of crypto traffic lies in the control over the "medium of exchange." The signing of the GENIUS Act in July 2025 provided a clear federal legal framework for compliant stablecoins. "Tokenized Deposits" launched by TradFi giants like BNY Mellon represent a sharp competition with native stablecoins like Tether.

As a direct digital representation of bank liabilities, tokenized deposits possess advantages that native stablecoins struggle to match, such as deposit insurance, interest rebates, and compliant identity (KYC). When the NYSE’s tokenized trading platform uses these regulated "digital dollars" as clearing units, it not only seizes CEX trading share but also extracts nutrients from the underlying liquidity pools.

The Linkage Logic Between ICE and Prediction Markets

The massive investment by Intercontinental Exchange (ICE) in Polymarket reveals a deeper logic behind TradFi's traffic grab—the integration of data and attention. As a leader in prediction markets, Polymarket gathers a vast amount of global sentiment data. By connecting it to the NYSE's tokenized platform, ICE is attempting to build a "sentiment-trading-settlement" closed loop. This forced fusion of decentralized prediction markets (DeFi narrative) and centralized securities exchanges (TradFi infrastructure) is essentially seizing crypto-native "attention assets" to serve the depth of traditional finance.

Reaping Regulatory Dividends: The Asymmetric Game of Compliance Costs

Paradigm Shift in the Regulatory Environment

The policy pivot during the Trump administration transformed the SEC and CFTC from "obstructionists" into "guides." This change in environment is a massive boon for licensed institutions like the NYSE. Traditional institutions have operated within regulatory frameworks for centuries, and their experience in handling complex legal disputes, investor protection, and market manipulation monitoring is something crypto-native exchanges cannot bridge in the short term.

Following the implementation of structural market legislation such as the CLARITY Act, tokenized stocks launched by the NYSE are regarded as statutory securities with "equivalent dividends and governance rights," rather than the legally ambiguous RWA (Real World Asset) projects found in the crypto market. The premium brought by this "statutory status" will attract large amounts of institutional capital with lower risk appetites.

The Ultimate Conflict Between KYC and the Permissionless Spirit

The advantage of crypto-native exchanges (especially DEXs) lies in their permissionless and anonymous nature. However, as global Anti-Money Laundering (AML) efforts intensify, this advantage is turning into a compliance risk. While the NYSE’s tokenized platform sacrifices some anonymity, it provides compliant channels for capital allocation and high-leverage support. For most institutional investors seeking stable returns, the "privacy protection of trading in the light" offered by the NYSE is far more attractive than the "dark forest" of DeFi.

Crypto Market Responses and Structural Dilemmas

Deepening Inward: The Absolute Moat of Native Assets

Crypto exchanges have found that although TradFi has seized traffic from stock tokenization, traditional institutions still find it difficult to complete compliance adaptation for Meme Coins, high-risk synthetic assets, and long-tail DeFi protocols in the short term. This has forced crypto exchanges to accelerate their return to "pure cryptofication," seeking liquidity islands that traditional finance cannot reach.

Merging Outward: Transformation into Multi-Asset Platforms

Another group of exchanges has chosen to "fight fire with fire." In 2026, several cryptocurrency exchanges launched TradFi asset trading sections almost simultaneously, supporting leveraged trading of commodities, forex, and global indices. This competition for "one-stop financial supermarkets" has made the boundaries between exchanges increasingly blurred. However, regarding core assets like U.S. stocks, crypto platforms still face legal compliance challenges in underlying asset custody, making it difficult to compete head-on with the NYSE, which possesses direct settlement rights.

Final Reflection: Symbiosis or Devourment?

TradFi's seizure of crypto traffic does not mean the demise of cryptocurrency; rather, it means that "crypto technology" has been fully absorbed as an underlying technology by the mainstream order. The NYSE launching 24/7 trading marks one of the most important institutional upgrades in human financial history—the transition of financial markets from "discrete time-slice trading" to "continuous on-chain circulation."

In this process, crypto exchanges must realize that the technological moat they once relied upon is no longer exclusive. Future competition for liquidity will no longer depend on who can provide "24-hour opening," but on who can more efficiently manage asset compliance, liquidity incentives, and innovative attention games on a global scale.

The entry of traditional finance is both a "coming of age" for the cryptocurrency industry and a brutal "clearing battle." Ultimately, we will witness the birth of a unified global 24-hour digital ledger, where the former "crypto assets" and "traditional securities" will differ only in label, with no remaining essential distinction.

From raw information to professional expertise. Partner with top researchers at CoinW Academy and build your systematic crypto knowledge today.

The InfoFi Survival Crisis: X Revokes API Access and the Collapse of Kaito’s Narrative

At the intersection of decentralized finance and social media data, an experiment regarding the "value of information" is facing its most severe survival challenge since its inception. On January 15, 2026, social media giant X (formerly Twitter) suddenly revised its platform rules, announcing the official revocation of API access for "InfoFi" applications, citing that such apps have generated large-scale spam to obtain token incentives. This decision instantly triggered a chain reaction in the Web3 space: as the leader in this sector, the Kaito platform token plummeted 19% within 24 hours, with its market capitalization shrinking to $160 million.

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