The US stock market opening time adopts a 23-hour format, and the on-chain stock and asset tokenization ecosystem is ready to launch

Nasdaq has submitted a compelling document to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission(SEC) outlining a major reform: plans to significantly extend U.S. stock trading hours from the current approximately 6.5 hours to 23 hours daily, officially incorporating the “night session” into the official trading system. This move not only involves adjustments to trading regulations but also reflects the accelerating trend of digital assets integrating with traditional finance. The change in U.S. stock market opening hours is becoming a key step in driving the upgrade of the entire financial market structure.

Policy Breakthrough: From Standard Hours to Nearly All-Day Trading

The core of Nasdaq’s plan to adjust U.S. stock market opening hours is to formalize the previously “neglected” after-hours trading session. Currently, U.S. stocks are traded only from 9:30 to 16:00 Eastern Time, which creates a natural barrier for global investors. Once approved, trading hours will extend to nearly all day, providing traders worldwide with greater convenience to participate in the U.S. stock market.

This is not just a minor adjustment to trading hours but a fundamental shift in market structure from “time-limited” to “24/7” trading. Correspondingly, some on-chain U.S. stock platforms (such as Ondo Finance, StableStock, etc.) that connect to exchanges via brokerages will benefit directly and significantly from this change.

Revolutionizing Retail Investor Experience

For ordinary investors, extending U.S. stock trading hours means they can participate in trading during work hours without staying up late to catch the opening. This convenience benefits traditional brokerages (like Futu, Tiger, etc.) as well as users of on-chain U.S. stock platforms.

The reason is that trading of on-chain U.S. stocks is essentially executed through underlying broker agents—user buy/sell orders ultimately connect to official markets like Nasdaq and NYSE. When official trading hours expand, this link becomes smoother, allowing on-chain operations to execute with lower slippage and higher certainty. This embodies the core of the “on-chain U.S. stocks with zero slippage and unlimited liquidity” underlying mechanism.

Upgrading Opportunities for the DeFi Ecosystem

A challenge in the original setup is that pre-market and after-hours trading volumes for U.S. stocks shrink, leading to an “inefficient” price discovery mechanism. For on-chain DeFi protocols (such as lending, derivatives, etc.) that depend on U.S. stock prices, this means a lack of continuous, authoritative price references.

The 23-hour official trading system changes all that. An almost all-day trading market will provide DeFi protocols with an uninterrupted, highly authoritative “price oracle.” This means that lending protocols’ liquidation mechanisms and derivatives’ risk management can rely on more real-time, reliable price signals, significantly enhancing the security and usability of the DeFi ecosystem.

Improving Market Makers and Risk Management

For on-chain stock brokerages and market makers, the 23-hour trading system offers a thorough optimization of risk management. Previously, when a sudden event occurred outside trading hours (such as major news or black swan events), the U.S. stock market would “sleep,” and prices could not reflect the new information promptly, exposing market makers to significant directional risk.

Under the new system, market makers can perform continuous hedging within the 23 hours, smoothing out price curves and ensuring deep liquidity at all times. In other words, they are no longer constrained by time windows and can provide more comprehensive liquidity support on-chain around the clock, effectively reducing extreme volatility caused by trading interruptions.

Infrastructure Development for Asset Tokenization

From a broader perspective, Nasdaq’s push to reform U.S. stock trading hours is laying the groundwork for the “everything on-chain” era. When traditional assets (like U.S. stocks) approach 24/7 trading hours, and the “time language” of on-chain asset tokenization markets becomes unified, the integration and interoperability between the two will become seamless.

This is seen as a critical step toward the ecosystem of on-chain stocks, on-chain bonds, and broader asset tokenization. In other words, expanding U.S. stock trading hours is building the foundation for future digital asset trading to seamlessly connect with traditional finance.

Outlook: From Policy Breakthrough to Ecosystem Prosperity

The extension of U.S. stock trading hours from 6.5 hours to 23 hours may seem like a simple regulatory adjustment, but it actually marks a crucial turning point in the evolution of traditional finance toward 24/7, seamless trading. This reform will directly unleash retail investment activity, enhance the stability of DeFi protocols, optimize risk management for market makers, and ultimately pave the way for on-chain stocks and asset tokenization.

It is foreseeable that with the official implementation of the new trading hours, on-chain asset tokenization will no longer be a distant future but will accelerate toward reality.