Wall Street is rapidly adopting perpetual futures and tokenized real-world assets, facilitating a 24/7 global market. Industry experts note that eliminating contract expiry dates and enabling instant "atomic" settlement are crucial, especially as crypto platforms lead price discovery during weekend geopolitical events.
Institutions are embracing these digital structures to solve operational issues with traditional, expiry-dated contracts. Iggy Ioppe, Chief Investment Officer at Theo, stated that 24/7 operations are now a "structural necessity." He cited the Strait of Hormuz closure, where traditional markets were dark over the weekend, but tokenized gold and oil provided transparent, continuous trading reflecting safe-haven demand.
Andrei Grachev, Managing Partner of DWF Labs, highlighted the events of February 28th when US and Israeli strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities occurred on a Saturday. Major commodity exchanges were closed, forcing traders to decentralized platforms for oil, gold, and silver. When traditional markets reopened, they had to catch up to on-chain price levels.
An IMF report on tokenized finance confirms this as a "structural reconfiguration." While atomic settlement enhances capital efficiency, it removes temporal buffers for banks and regulators. The IMF suggests Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs) are needed to ground these markets in "public anchor" trust, warning that without them, the speed of tokenized systems could cause instant liquidity crises.
Real-world assets (RWAs) like gold, real estate, and commodities are being digitized into blockchain tokens. Larry Fink, CEO of BlackRock, supports tokenization for easier issuance, trading, and access, with BlackRock's BUIDL fund already tokenizing US Treasuries.
Perpetual futures contracts allow betting on future prices without ownership or a deadline. The global volume for these contracts exceeds $60 billion daily. Institutional adoption hinges on regulatory and custodial infrastructure, liquidity, and pricing, according to Fabian Dori of Sygnum.