Nikolas Sargeant
Bitwise Chief Investment Officer Matt Hougan has dramatically revised his timeline for traditional finance adopting blockchain-based infrastructure after observing investor behavior during the US-Israel attack on Iran, with substantial trading activity migrating to cryptocurrency platforms offering continuous market access.
In a Tuesday post titled "The weekend that changed finance," Hougan stated cryptocurrency perpetual futures platform Hyperliquid became the epicenter for trading real-world assets including crude oil and tokenized gold while US, European, and Asian stock exchanges were closed during the first attack Saturday around 3:30 am UTC.
"For most of Sunday, onchain finance was the center of the financial world," Hougan stated, adding he previously expected traditional markets to take five to 10 years to move onchain but now anticipates the shift occurring much sooner. "This weekend proved me wrong. Now I'm convinced it's going to happen much faster than that," he wrote, characterizing blockchain's 24/7 trading capabilities as making "stock exchanges and T+1 settlement look archaic."
Hyperliquid processed over $11.5 billion in trading volume across Saturday and Sunday. "When Bloomberg wanted to write about how crude oil responded to the bombing, it cited the Hyperliquid crude oil contract as the most relevant price," Hougan noted.
Tether Gold's 24-hour trading volume spiked to over $300 million, while prediction market volumes on Kalshi and Polymarket also increased substantially during the period.
The New York Stock Exchange and parent Intercontinental Exchange announced plans in January to enable 24/7 trading and instant settlement of stocks and exchange-traded funds through a blockchain post-trade system. No timeline was provided for the platform's launch, nor details about which blockchain would support operations.
Hougan stated hedge funds, banks, and investors seeking competitive trading capabilities currently have no alternative but to establish stablecoin wallets and learn cryptocurrency perpetuals platforms like Hyperliquid.
