Recently, I noticed a rather interesting phenomenon: the U.S. stock market is undergoing a thorough transformation, and the scale of this change may be underestimated by many.

Last year, I saw a data report from Nasdaq that mentioned a figure that left a deep impression on me—the trading peak on Nasdaq reached 200,000 trades per second. What does that mean? To compare, the peak in the A-share market was only 18,000 trades per second, and in the Hong Kong market it was about 65,000 trades per second. Including the options market, Nasdaq’s peak even reached 20,000,000 trades per second. What does this reflect behind the scenes? It reflects extreme tiering of liquidity, as well as a frenzy of retail investor sentiment.

But the more critical change comes next. Nasdaq has already announced plans to extend trading hours from the original 16 hours to 23 hours—not merely an extension of time, but a breakthrough that breaks through time zone limitations. According to their data, now 80% of the trading volume during the night session comes from outside the United States, with Korean investors making the biggest contribution—in some time periods, investors in Seoul account for even half of the entire night session’s trading volume. When we monitor these data in real time in Seoul, it becomes clear that Asian capital’s influence on U.S. stocks is no longer negligible.

So what does this mean? For quantitative institutions, this is both an opportunity and a challenge. The “downtime window” that was originally used to maintain systems and clean data has almost disappeared—hardware, networks, and disaster recovery systems all need comprehensive upgrades. Staffing schedules also need to be redesigned, shifting from the traditional “work at sunrise” model to a 24-hour trading desk that covers global time zones. But the opportunities are also obvious—arbitrage opportunities driven by price spreads linking A-shares, Hong Kong stocks, and U.S. stocks (especially Chinese concept stocks and cross-market ETFs) will increase significantly.

More shocking still is the introduction of Tokenized settlement. Nasdaq has already filed with the SEC to report and plan to launch tokenized stock trading. This is not about issuing any new Token; it’s about changing the backend settlement mechanism on the premise that the existing code, order book, and matching engine remain completely unchanged. Under the traditional model, even though U.S. stocks have been shortened to T+1, they fundamentally still rely on DTCC’s centralized ledger, involving complex clearing and settlement. The tokenized model is different: it achieves atomic settlement through blockchain—meaning that at the instant an investor buys a stock, ownership is transferred immediately, effectively making it T+0.

For investors, the equity rights of “tokenized stocks” are exactly the same as traditional stocks—there is no difference in dividend rights or voting rights—but the trading experience gains the immediacy and programmability of cryptocurrencies. What is this? This is the real integration of Web3 and traditional finance.

I’ve also noticed that some decentralized RWA platforms are accelerating this process—for example, by directly supporting the purchase of RWA spot and derivatives using USDT and USDC. Once Nasdaq’s tokenization plan is officially rolled out, and combined with these explorations by on-chain platforms, the future financial market will no longer have any clear distinction between a “fiat world” and a “crypto world.” The liquidity frictions between USDC and stocks like TSLA and NVDA will be greatly reduced. For those engaged in quantitative trading, this could be a golden age for arbitrage strategies.

Looking back from now, the U.S. stock market is no longer the single market we knew before. It is turning into a massive ecosystem that operates for 23 hours, integrates blockchain settlement technology, and bridges the boundaries between public and private markets. This is not just a change in trading rules, but a fundamental rebuilding of the underlying logic. Adapting to this new normal of “high-frequency, around-the-clock, tokenized” trading is essential for all market participants.