Global Listing, 24-Hour Stock Trading? Analyzing the NYSE's On-Chain "Open Strategy"

This move not only attempts to eliminate the "IPO time lag" between Wall Street and the crypto world but also, with its over $2.5 billion in assets under management and $9 billion in cumulative trading volume, demonstrates to the market its ambition to transform from an "intermediary" into a "digital underwriter."

However, no matter how high-profile or transformative Ondo is, it represents only a "downstream breakthrough" initiated by crypto-native protocols. The true ceiling of the U.S. stock tokenization wave is still determined by traditional infrastructure giants. On January 19, 2026, the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) officially announced that it is developing a platform for trading tokenized securities and on-chain settlement and will seek the necessary regulatory approvals for this platform.

This news sparked considerable discussion in both traditional finance and the crypto industry, but most people simplified it to one sentence—"the NYSE is going to tokenize U.S. stocks." This statement is, of course, correct but far from sufficient. If this is simply understood as "putting stocks on-chain" or "traditional finance moving closer to Web3," the essence is missed. The NYSE's move is, in fact, a well-considered institutional revolution.

Odaily hopes to start with this news itself to comprehensively and systematically outline the current development process of U.S. stock tokenization. As the opening piece of this series, we will specifically discuss what this significant news actually says and what impact it will have on the entire traditional U.S. stock industry.

1. What Exactly Did the NYSE News Say?

Judging from the official NYSE announcement, the NYSE is not merely slapping a "token" label on stocks. Its core is not a specific product but rather the re-deconstruction and restructuring of the entire chain within the securities trading system. We have identified four core changes, outlined as follows:

(1) 7×24 Hour Trading

7×24 hour trading is a perennial core difference between crypto financial markets and traditional financial markets. However, the 7×24 hour trading mentioned by the NYSE this time is not simply about extending trading hours; it explicitly focuses on "post-trade infrastructure." What it aims to build is a new digital platform that combines the existing matching engine (Pillar) with a blockchain-based post-trade system, thereby enabling the "trading, settlement, custody" chain to operate continuously. In simple terms, the NYSE wants to create new technological and institutional arrangements to allow the settlement system itself to adapt to continuous operation.

The core reason traditional securities markets have long adhered to fixed trading hours is that various processes in the workflow, such as settlement and fund transfers, are highly dependent on bank operating hours and clearing windows. The NYSE proposes using on-chain or tokenized funding instruments to cover "funding gaps during non-operating hours," thereby activating the "night/weekend" market closure periods.

Whether 24/7 trading is ultimately good or bad for financial markets and retail investors, Odaily believes, should be considered carefully. But for U.S. stocks themselves, the benefits likely outweigh the drawbacks. After all, as the world's most critical asset pool, if U.S. stocks' trading hours remain fixed to their home turf, they cannot progress further to become a more globalized asset liquidity base.

(2) Stablecoin Instant Settlement

As just mentioned, the NYSE hopes to extend trading hours using new "on-chain or tokenized funding instruments." One of the most critical tools among these is the settlement instrument.

The wording in the NYSE's official press release includes "instant settlement" and "stablecoin-based funding," and it explicitly states the platform will use a "blockchain post-trade system" to achieve on-chain settlement. Here, we need to grasp two key points:

• First, the NYSE is not proposing a basic idea like "buying stocks with stablecoins"; it hopes stablecoins can become tools for settlement and margin management.
• Second, the meaning of "instant settlement" is to evolve settlement from the traditional T+1 to near-real-time.

The most direct effect this brings is avoiding various risks arising from the time gap between trading and settlement. The NYSE specifically mentioned collaborating with BNY and Citi to promote "tokenized deposits," aiming to allow clearing members to transfer and manage funds, meet margin requirements, and cover cross-timezone and cross-jurisdictional funding needs during banks' non-operating hours.

(3) Fractional Share Trading

Having discussed the innovation in trading infrastructure, let's talk about the biggest benefit this innovation brings (for non-U.S. investors).

Throughout the development of the U.S. stock tokenization narrative, we have analyzed the benefits and risks of fractional shares many times. However, the NYSE's recent news should be considered the first official mention of the "fractional share trading" concept. The news mentions that the platform hopes to change the trading unit from the traditional 1 "share" to a unit closer to "asset allocation by amount." One share of Tesla currently has a market value of around $400—small retail investors might find it too expensive or too volatile. But what if, in the future, they could spend $10 on the new platform to buy 0.025 shares of Tesla? Sounds tempting, right?

Of course, making retail investors with modest investment power happy is certainly not the NYSE's primary goal. The NYSE aims to redefine the minimum tradable unit of a security, making it compatible with the granularity of tokenization and on-chain settlement.

The implications of this move are numerous. First, market-making and liquidity provision methods will undergo significant changes because liquidity will no longer revolve solely around whole-share depth but will be rebuilt around other standards (e.g., monetary amount). Second, when the platform allows "tokenized stocks and traditionally issued securities to be fungible," fractional shares make it easier for different forms of the same asset to be cleared, exchanged, and connected across different systems. This sounds a bit abstract, but it can be simply analogized to breaking a large bill into small change with a unified currency that can be spent and exchanged in different stores.

Within this structural adjustment, the significance of fractional share trading is also redefined. For a long time, fractional shares have often been viewed as a "convenience feature" for retail investors. But in this context, it resembles more of a financial engineering prerequisite. Only when assets can be standardized and split can they possess further composability, routability, and programmability, and thus be incorporated into automated clearing and on-chain settlement systems. In other words, fractional shares are not for "making assets more affordable" but for giving the assets themselves the technical foundation for digital circulation.

(4) Native Digital Securities (Native Issuance)

Regarding the concept of "native digital securities," the NYSE has also set very clear boundaries. Its goal is not, like Nasdaq, to simply map existing stocks to on-chain certificates but to explore a form of security that runs natively on-chain from the point of rights establishment.

This means dividends, voting rights, and corporate governance mechanisms are not patched in via off-chain rules but are directly embedded within the lifecycle of the digital security. This is not a packaging upgrade at the technical level but a redefinition of how securities exist.

Once native issuance is permitted, it means the logic of securities rights establishment, shareholder registries, corporate dividends, voting, governance, as well as custody and transfer restrictions must all be redesigned. Simultaneously, a more attractive point is that the NYSE limits the distribution channels to qualified broker-dealers, which is also a preemptive answer to a core regulatory question: this is not a "wild token market" for free minting and circulation by retail investors; it retains order, thresholds, and management.

2. Why Now?

Why now? Why would the NYSE propose such "radical" reforms at this moment?

Any innovative financial product that truly moves toward the mainstream market is ultimately tested not by how compelling its narrative is, but by whether its underlying system is robust enough to withstand the entry of large-scale, low-error-tolerance capital.

Over the past few years, the market has not lacked discussions about "on-chain," "decentralization," and "efficiency revolution." However, the reason these discussions have not been applied in reality is that they are often built upon immature foundations of funding, clearing, and risk control.

The NYSE has also been very clever; it has not attempted to run a blockchain system centered on itself but is embedding tokenization into existing market infrastructure.

Its parent company, ICE, is collaborating with traditional core banks like BNY Mellon and Citibank to support tokenized deposits and related funding instruments within its clearinghouse system. This arrangement would allow clearing members to transfer funds, fulfill margin obligations, and manage risk exposures even during banks' non-operating hours, thereby providing a practically feasible funding and liquidity backbone for 7×24 hour trading.

Here, Odaily wants to emphasize that when the funds themselves begin to be tokenized, we are no longer talking about "conceptual assets" but "money" itself. Therefore, regulation, risk control, and access standards must be raised to an extremely high level; otherwise, the system simply cannot bear the trust of mainstream society.

Precisely because of this, the NYSE has not attempted to "start from scratch" in its market structure design. The platform emphasizes "non-discriminatory access" within a compliant framework, but this non-discrimination always has boundaries—it is open only to qualified broker-dealers, and all trading activities remain embedded within the existing market structure and regulatory logic, not operating outside the regulatory system. Therefore, those who will stand firm in the future are not new "counterparties" but the layer of infrastructure built on top of the compliant trading system that can carry user understanding, asset allocation, and trading entry points.

Driven by the megatrend, seizing ecosystem positioning and capturing on-chain liquidity entry points have become inevitable battles for various platform players like Ondo, Kraken, and MSX. This race involves not only crypto-native giants like Ondo but also platforms like MSX, which focus deeply on the vertical track of U.S. stock tokenization, building their defensive moats through high-frequency screening and launching new derivative products. For these smaller, more agile players with precise entry points, as long as they can gain a foothold in this wave, the future imagination space is vast.

Simultaneously, tokenization does not change the legal attributes of securities; tokenized shareholders legally still fully enjoy the dividend and governance rights corresponding to traditional securities. This point was considered crucial in the discussion: when a product attempts to enter mainstream capital markets, whether the rights are clear and the ownership is solid is far more important than the technical path itself.

From a more macro perspective, what the NYSE is trying to solve is not just trading efficiency but the long-standing problem of liquidity fragmentation plaguing traditional markets. By combining "high-trust institutional arrangements" with "more efficient technological means," it hopes to bring trading demand that originally flowed to dark pools, OTC structures, or non-regulated platforms back into a transparent, auditable, and accountable system. A recurring consensus in the discussion was that innovation that can truly endure cycles is often not the most radical kind but the form that can withstand the most stringent tests at the compliance and infrastructure levels. Once such a structure is proven feasible, the entry of traditional capital is not a resistance but rather an accelerator.

From a legal perspective, the deeper significance of this process is not limited to technological upgrade but is closer to a phased evolution in the way capital is formed. Through on-chain clearing and custody, traditional financial institutions can, without overturning the existing securities law and regulatory framework, make asset allocation more global and temporally continuous. This is not "the old system being replaced by new technology" but new technology being incorporated into the most core, most rigorous operational logic of the old system—and this is precisely the prerequisite for mainstream finance to truly begin accepting a new form.

Special Disclaimer: This article is an original work by the Odaily team. It represents only the personal views of the author(s) and does not constitute legal advice or a legal opinion on any specific matter.