Traditional Finance Accelerates Embrace of 24/7 Crypto Trading Chains, Bitwise CIO Raises Expectations

Bitwise CIO Matt Hougan says he has significantly raised his estimate for when ‘on-chain finance’ will take hold, as investors flock to crypto platforms like Hyperliquid to trade tokenized assets. This shift was particularly evident during the recent escalation of tensions between Israel and Iran.

Hougan noted that on-chain finance was the focus of global financial markets for most of Sunday. He had originally predicted that the migration of traditional financial markets to the chain would take 5 to 10 years, but the current market reaction has convinced him that this process will happen much faster than expected. He emphasized that the 24/7 trading infrastructure provided by blockchain makes the T+1 settlement mechanism of traditional stock exchanges seem outdated. For example, when Bloomberg wanted to track the reaction of oil prices to the situation in the Middle East, it cited oil contracts on Hyperliquid as the most representative price reference. Currently, hedge funds, banks, and other institutional investors have had to open stablecoin wallets and learn to trade on crypto perpetual contract platforms such as Hyperliquid in order to remain competitive in the market. This trend indicates that the traditional financial system is quietly moving closer to crypto infrastructure, rather than just being a fringe experiment.