Collateral and cash infrastructure, not trading hours, are the real 24/7 barrier

A panel at the Wyoming SALT conference last week converged rapidly on the view that around-the-clock trading is an inevitability, but spent more time on the harder question underneath it. Trading venues can run at any hour; what cannot yet keep pace is the collateral and cash settlement infrastructure those trades depend on, and without that plumbing the extra hours are largely cosmetic.

Tradeweb chief product officer Chris Bruner argued that blockchain rails are not theoretically required for 24/7 trading, since trades could in principle settle on a Monday after a weekend execution. In practice, he said, repo markets and the need for programmable collateral make the rails essential. On this reading, blockchain is post-trade infrastructure that enables continuous markets rather than a trading venue in its own right, and that distinction matters at the volumes TradFi handles.

Digital Asset and Canton Network co-founder Yuval Rooz framed the collateral problem at scale, estimating roughly $40 trillion in eligible collateral sits idle across jurisdictions because it cannot move quickly enough to be useful where it is needed. A balance sheet in Tokyo cannot efficiently fund New York trading and return before Asian hours resume. The mobilisation of that collateral is the stated purpose of projects such as the Digital Asset and DTCC work on US Treasuries and equities, and the Japanese Government Bond (JGB) initiative involving Mizuho, MUFG, and the Japan Securities Clearing Corporation (JSCC). Those projects are now the ones to watch, since whether 24/7 trading becomes commercially viable hinges on them reaching production scale.