Wall Street Is Going Onchain: 60+ U.S. Stocks and Private AI Companies Entering the 24/7 Era

The line between traditional finance and crypto is beginning to blur.

Crypto’s promise has long been that financial assets could be programmable, global and available 24x7.

Now that’s beginning to happen well beyond just Bitcoin and stablecoins.

In the most recent example, crypto exchange OKX and parent company of NYSE Intercontinental Exchange (ICE) have informed the SEC about plans for a tokenized securities venue that would bring more than 60 U.S.-listed stocks to onchain settlement in a 24/7 environment.

At almost the same time, Ondo Finance launched a product called Ondo Private Markets that aims to bring tokenized exposure to private companies onto the blockchain, starting with a pre-IPO artificial-intelligence firm.

Taken together, these two stories suggest something much bigger: crypto’s arrival as an infrastructural layer to rebuild financial markets from the ground up.

The Stock Market Gets a Crypto Upgrade

The stock market has historically functioned in set hours.

That means if you wanted to buy or sell shares in a company, you had to do so within that window.

Outside of it, the market was closed.

Blockchain infrastructure does not have that limitation; it can process transactions 24x7, regardless if it’s Monday morning or Sunday night.

This is the basis for what OKXICE (a joint venture between OKX and ICE) has proposed: a venue for trading tokenized securities that would bring “more than 60 U.S.-listed stocks” to a 24-hour onchain trading environment.

The list of companies that would reportedly be included in the venue are recognizable names: Nvidia, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Tesla, JPMorgan, Walmart, Netflix, Coinbase, Robinhood, Palantir, AMD, Circle and SpaceX, among others.

What’s notable about this proposed system is that it will not attempt to recreate an order book market.

As explained by CoinDesk, the venue would “utilize stablecoins as settlement currency and blockchain-based liquidity pools for trading.”

This combination of U.S. equities plus stablecoins, blockchain-based settlement and 24-hour trading seems much closer to what crypto enthusiasts have long envisioned.

The very idea of a stock market as we know it may be due for disruption.

 Why 24/7 Stocks Are Actually Important

At first glance, the value of being able to trade stocks 24/7 seems self-explanatory: it’s more convenient for investors.

The bigger implication, however, is that it’s a fundamental change to market structure.

If, say, there was breaking news on a weekend, it would take until the market re-opened for traditional stock trading to resume.

But with a crypto-native market design, price discovery and settlement could continue uninterrupted.

Financial markets would essentially behave more like crypto markets: borderless, always on, programmable, transferable and composable.

This could lead to entirely new asset classes that were previously impossible to imagine.

Equities would no longer be what they’ve been for centuries: isolated financial instruments.

They’d become ingredients for new financial systems that can be built onchain.

 But Ondo Went One Step Further

Publicly-traded stocks are only part of what Ondo Finance announced last week.

The bigger part may actually be a new platform called Ondo Private Markets that aims to tokenize economic exposure to private companies, starting with one of the largest pre-IPO artificial intelligence firms.

The product is set to launch this week, with secondary trading available to qualified investors starting this weekend.

That’s right: if you have the proper accreditation, you could technically trade tokenized exposure to a private company this Saturday.

This is significant because some of the world’s most valuable and hyped companies have tended to stay private for much longer.

Investors may hear about these companies before they launch on public markets.

But aside from venture capital firms and institutional investors, most people are shut out from early access.

Ondo aims to disrupt that, too.

The platform will use tokenized notes as a way to provide economic exposure, rather than traditional private equity vehicles.

It’s important to note that these tokens do not represent ownership or shares in the underlying companies.

Rather, it’s a note that provides exposure to the value of shares that would otherwise be inaccessible before an IPO liquidity event.

So it’s not really accurate to think about this as “buying company shares before they go public.”

It’s more like “buying a blockchain-based instrument whose economics are tied to the value of company shares at the time of an exit.”

 The Most Interesting Part About This Is Liquidity

Private investments have always been plagued by a challenge: getting in and, more importantly, getting out.

An investor could hold exposure to a private company for years at a time before there was any chance to sell it.

With Ondo’s model, however, investors would be able to hold the tokenized notes in their wallets and potentially trade them in secondary markets 24/7.

That’s an intriguing combination: private-market exposure plus blockchain liquidity.

If this experiment takes off, the definition of what it means for something to be “private” may begin to change.

It’s not just about the company staying private for longer.

It’s about financial exposure to that company being much more liquid than it’s ever been.

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# Why AI Companies Were the Logical Starting Point

There’s a reason why Ondo chose to start with an AI company.

Many of the largest technology firms of the coming decade may spend more time in private markets than on public ones.

AI startups, robotics firms, cybersecurity companies and infrastructure plays can be incredibly capital-intensive before they ever reach profitability.

Ondo announced that 87% of U.S. companies with annual revenues of more than $100 million are privately held.

This suggests that the public stock market only represents a small slice of the overall economic pie.

The majority of economic activity occurs long before companies enter public markets.

This appears to be especially true for technology.

But How Does This Connect With the Other Story?

Let’s return to the original story about OKXICE and the proposed venue for trading tokenized securities.

It’s a public market-focused play, whereas Ondo’s announcement was more about private investments.

They’re clearly two different approaches.

But they’re both indicative of a much bigger trend: onchain financial markets.

Ondo has already expanded its tokenization offerings to include not just private companies, but public stocks, Treasuries and more.

OKX and ICE are now jumping into the tokenized stock fray.

Meanwhile, The Block’s market data suggests that tokenized equities are quickly becoming a large part of the overall tokenized asset market.

The broader implication is that it’s no longer just about whether traditional financial assets will tokenize — it’s about how much of it will happen.

But There Are Some Important Caveats

The headline language for Ondo’s announcement was nearly revolutionary in tone.

The reality, however, is much more nuanced.

For one thing, Ondo notes that the private market tokens are not meant to represent shares in the underlying companies; they do not confer shareholder rights.

The tokens are also restricted to eligible non-U.S. investors in certain jurisdictions.

There are also potential risks around valuation, custodial safety, smart contract risks and pricing disconnects during periods of market volatility.

Trading 24/7 may sound great in theory, but it’s important to remember that a stock’s liquidity rarely follows the same pattern outside of regular market hours.

The token may be able to trade on Saturday, but the official valuation of the underlying company may not update until Monday.

The technology can support continuous trading, but the financial markets may not support continuous liquidity.

“Stocks on Crypto” Would Be Revolutionary, But It’s Not What’s Happening

The phrase “stocks on crypto” is misleading, because it suggests something superficial: crypto as a settlement medium for traditional financial assets.

The deeper revolution is much more profound: traditional finance is attempting to adopt crypto’s foundational protocols.

The end result is something that resembles regulated financial exposure with the programmable flexibility of blockchain assets.

Regulated financial exposure can settle onchain and potentially move between wallets with far greater ease than before.

Traditional financial assets can now interoperate with other blockchain-based financial instruments.

And trading can theoretically happen at any time and in any jurisdiction where it’s legal.

These are all revolutionary changes to how traditional finance operates.

What Would It Mean if This Takes Off?

Imagine a world where an investor buys tokenized exposure to a public company at 9 a.m. Monday.

They move it between wallets the following day, use a tokenized Treasury product as part of a diversified portfolio on Wednesday and purchase tokenized exposure to a private AI company on Thursday.

They rebalance their portfolio using onchain infrastructure on Friday, and then trade those same tokens over the weekend when traditional markets are closed.

That seems like a world that could be possible — if the pieces fall into place.

This is what makes these two announcements so noteworthy: they represent an opportunity to usher in a new financial era.

It’s unclear how much of this will scale, but the potential impact is massive.

The New Crypto Arms Race Is About Financial Infrastructure

In crypto’s early years, companies competed to build the best exchanges possible.

Later, they competed to build the best stablecoins possible.

Now the race has turned to who can control the settlement rails that connect traditional finance to crypto markets.

OKX and ICE (parent company of the NYSE) entering the tokenized stock arena is an indication that the competition for dominance in financial infrastructure is heating up.

It’s one thing for a crypto-native exchange to tokenize stocks.

It’s something else entirely for traditional market infrastructure to embrace crypto-native settlement solutions.

And Ondo’s announcement suggests that the battle for financial infrastructure may extend to more than just publicly traded securities.

It will likely extend to the entire asset class spectrum.

 The Billion-Dollar Question is Whether Anyone Will Actually Want These

Anyone who has followed tokenization knows that the technical challenges are not insurmountable.

Anyone who has followed tokenization also knows that there are numerous risks and regulatory hurdles that must be navigated.

The biggest question of all is less technical and more intuitive: will investors want them?

If the value proposition is strong enough, demand will follow.

The question is whether programmable, permissioned, portable financial instruments will be preferred to their traditional counterparts.

Liquidity is rarely free.

Settlement convenience is rarely free.

Jurisdictional flexibility is rarely free.

If those things turn out to be desirable attributes for investors, demand will eventually follow.

The next few years will be telling.

 Final Thoughts

Bitcoin disrupted the monetary system.

Stablecoins disrupted the payments system.

DeFi disrupted the financial services model.

Now tokenization is poised to disrupt the very structure of financial markets.

More than 60 U.S.-listed stocks getting ready to participate in a 24-hour tokenized securities venue would be momentous enough.

But a company launching a product to bring private AI-company exposure onto the blockchain suggests that financial infrastructure disruption may well be imminent.

It’s ironic, but not unexpected: crypto has spent years trying to build an alternate financial system.

Now Wall Street appears to be trying to adopt it.

The next chapter of crypto may involve a world where financial markets exist as we know them — but only within a crypto-native environment.