Bitwise: This weekend's attack accelerated the on-chain migration in the financial world

The Weekend That Changed Finance

By Matt Hougan

Reprinted from Mars Finance

I’ve always believed that the shift of the financial industry onto the blockchain is inevitable.

Blockchain enables assets to be traded 24/7 year-round, with instant settlement, at a much lower cost than traditional systems. It makes traditional stock trading platforms and T+1 settlement seem incredibly outdated.

But I’ve always wondered: when exactly will this transformation happen? And what event will push the entire system to change completely?

After all, most people don’t even feel the delays in the current system. When my uncle buys stocks through his Charles Schwab account, he doesn’t care about waiting a day for settlement, nor does he care about the complex processes involving mysterious institutions like NSCC, DTCC, Cede & Co. He buys, the stocks appear in his account—simple, straightforward, no fuss.

So I once thought that crypto-driven markets would first grow on the fringes. In the next 5 to 10 years, they would mainly serve crypto-native users and those who can’t fully integrate into traditional finance, like retail investors worldwide wanting to trade US stocks. Eventually, these systems would become good enough to gradually take over the existing infrastructure, with institutions like the NYSE shifting from floor trading to electronic and tokenized markets, just as they transitioned from open outcry to electronic trading.

It would be a classic tech story: disrupt the edge first, then take over the core. I thought this would take 5 to 10 years.

But this weekend proved I was wrong. I am now convinced that all of this is happening faster than anyone expected.

What happened this weekend

At 2:30 AM Eastern Time on Sunday, February 28, Trump announced an attack on Iran. This timing was extremely unusual for global financial markets, as almost all markets were closed.

· U.S. stock markets closed · U.S. futures markets closed · Major forex markets closed · European markets closed · Asian markets closed

Basically, only Middle Eastern markets like Saudi Arabia and Qatar, which trade from Sunday to Thursday, were open. But these markets are limited in scale and coverage, with little participation from Western investors and limited assets.

In the past, if a major geopolitical shock occurred on Sunday morning, investors would have to wait until 6:00 PM US futures opened on Sunday night to see how the markets would react. But this weekend showed us that they now have another option: turn to the 24/7, global crypto infrastructure.

And that’s exactly what they did.

All day Sunday, on-chain finance became the center of the global financial scene. Especially the decentralized trading platform Hyperliquid, which became the focus. It offers perpetual contracts for cryptocurrencies and real-world assets like oil.

Hyperliquid’s trading volume surged so much that Bloomberg, when reporting on the impact of the airstrike on oil prices, directly cited Hyperliquid’s oil contract prices as the most relevant reference. This was no coincidence—the native token HYPE surged about 30% over the weekend. To me, it looks more like investors are pre-buying its future.

But it’s not just Hyperliquid. Tether’s gold token XAUT saw 24-hour trading volume spike over $300 million. Prediction markets like Kalshi and Polymarket hit new trading volume highs. Cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum also became focal points.

In my memory, this is the first time that the crypto market has truly become a “market” in the full sense.

Why this matters

If you’re a hedge fund, a bank, or any investor wanting to stay competitive, you have no choice now: you must open a stablecoin wallet, learn to trade on Hyperliquid, understand XAUT, and study tokenized stocks.

Because even if you don’t do it, others will.

This trend will accelerate. The biggest barrier to participating in on-chain markets is getting used to wallets, stablecoins, Hyperliquid, Uniswap, and similar tools. Once you get started, all the new capabilities of DeFi and on-chain finance are within reach. Engagement leads to exploration, and exploration leads to trading.

Of course, some will say: “Traditional markets can do this too!” Nasdaq is rolling out trading 24 hours a day, five days a week! We don’t offer 24/7 trading because no one needs it!

Fine, say whatever you want. Back in the day, PPTV also dismissed Netflix, and Microsoft dismissed the iPhone.

The shift to on-chain finance is inevitable. And after this weekend, I am convinced: its arrival will be sooner than any of us imagined.