Coinbase CEO says tokenized assets go far beyond 24/7 trading

Armstrong: Access, Not Hours, Is the Real Issue

@coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong (@brian_armstrong) has pushed back on the argument that stock exchanges going near-continuous renders blockchain irrelevant. His response came days after Nasdaq confirmed a 23-hour trading session starting December 6. Beginning December 6, Nasdaq expects U.S. equities to trade 23 hours a day, five days a week, adding a new overnight session from 9 p.m. to 4 a.m. Eastern with only a one-hour daily pause.

Some observers argued the move undermines one of crypto's core selling points: round-the-clock markets. Armstrong disagreed, framing crypto not as a scheduling fix but as a structural one. He called crypto a forcing function on the broader shift happening in finance and said the debate around trading hours misses the bigger picture entirely.

Armstrong's argument centers on access rather than hours. He cited over 4 billion people worldwide who lack brokerage access and argued that tokenization addresses that gap in a way that extended exchange sessions simply cannot. "Tokenization and onchain assets are the future of finance," he wrote.

Tokenization as a Financial Upgrade

Armstrong has called for putting real estate, stocks, bonds, and funds on-chain, saying the move could bring instant settlement, fractional ownership, and wider access for global investors. He also linked open blockchain protocols with expanded financial participation, arguing that self-custodial wallets and smartphone-based access could reduce reliance on traditional intermediaries.

The remarks land against a backdrop of rapid growth in the tokenized asset space. The tokenized real-world asset market grew 263% year over year in 2025 and roughly 30% in the first quarter of 2026. In its Q1 2026 earnings call, Coinbase said stablecoins had passed $300 billion in market value, while tokenized real-world assets were expected to reach $16 trillion by 2030.

Nasdaq's move to near-continuous trading is itself partly a response to competitive pressure from crypto. Investors are increasingly using platforms that provide access to digital assets, including tokenized securities, on a 24/7 basis, and Nasdaq cited that trend as part of its rationale for extending hours. But Armstrong's position is that extending hours is a reaction, not a solution. Blockchain-based tokenization, in his view, removes the intermediaries and infrastructure constraints that make access unequal in the first place.

Sources:
Alston & Bird: Looking Ahead to Nasdaq's Extended Trading Hours
Yahoo Finance: Nasdaq Confirms 23-Hour Trading from December
Crypto.news: Brian Armstrong Says Finance Must Move On-Chain or Fall Behind