On a typical Friday, a portfolio manager’s job ends when the closing bell rings. This year, that line is getting blurry.
While the New York Stock Exchange is dark, a tokenized money‑market fund from Franklin Templeton and tokenized versions of blue‑chip stocks can now change hands in OTC markets around the clock, and soon, some of those same equities will be tradable and settleable in tokenized form on Nasdaq’s own infrastructure, under the same rules and disclosures as any regular listing.
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Flow Traders, a major European ETP market maker with two decades of ETF‑liquidity experience, has switched on 24/7 quotes for tokenized stocks, gold, and money‑market funds via an institutional OTC platform.
At almost the same moment, the SEC approved Nasdaq’s rule change, after a seven‑month review, to allow trading in tokenized securities under its existing exchange framework, in coordination with the Depository Trust Company and with partners including Kraken’s xStocks and Stuttgart’s Seturion.
Flow Traders: 24/7 liquidity for tokenized stocks, gold, and money funds
Flow Traders is best known for keeping ETF and ETP prices tight across European and global exchanges. Now it’s using that market‑making expertise to make tokenized versions of traditional assets tradeable far beyond normal hours.
The firm’s digital‑asset unit is quoting two‑sided OTC prices around the clock on tokenized money‑market funds including Franklin Templeton’s on‑chain BENJI product, providing liquidity on tokenized gold such as Tether Gold, and expanding into tokenized single‑stock and equity‑index exposures through FIX‑connected institutional OTC execution.
If you’re a retail investor holding ETFs in a brokerage app, you won’t see a new “token” button tomorrow.
The clients here are professional desks, banks, asset managers, and prop‑trading firms, that need to manage cash and risk during Asian or weekend sessions without waiting for U.S. exchanges to open, prefer negotiated OTC blocks and RFQ workflows rather than retail‑style GUIs, and need a recognized market maker willing to stand in the middle when the underlying cash markets are closed.
For those desks, tokenization doesn’t conjure new assets out of thin air. It gives them the same underlying exposures, money‑market yields, gold, equity beta, on a different settlement rail, in more time zones, under a familiar counterparty name.
Nasdaq and the SEC: tokenized equities inside the existing rulebook
Flow Traders is extending the trading day, Nasdaq is changing the backend behind it.
In mid‑March, following a seven‑month review process that began in September 2025, the SEC approved Nasdaq’s proposal to list and trade tokenized securities under its existing exchange licence, in a new pilot program that will operate alongside the DTCC’s own tokenization infrastructure.
The approved pilot initially covers DTC‑eligible securities: equities in the Russell 1000 Index and ETFs tracking major benchmarks like the S&P 500 and Nasdaq‑100.
What’s important is what doesn’t change. Tokenized shares will carry the same CUSIP number, trade under the same ticker, and give holders identical voting and dividend rights as their traditional equivalents, settling through the DTCC framework at initially familiar T+2 or shorter cycles.
Nasdaq is also required to give the market at least 30 days’ notice via Equity Trader Alert before the pilot goes live, and any expansion beyond the initial scope needs a separate regulatory sign‑off.
In other words, Nasdaq is not launching a parallel wild‑west market. It is layering a tokenized settlement option on top of the existing equity and ETF universe so that broker‑dealers and institutional clients who want on‑chain or near‑instant settlement can opt in without leaving the regulated venue or losing any of the legal rights attached to their shares.
How these moves fit the “24/7 markets” narrative
For years the talking point was simple: crypto trades around the clock. Stocks don’t.
Flow Traders and Nasdaq together are showing how that binary is beginning to break down, slowly, at the institutional layer first.
On the one hand, 24/7 OTC quotes on tokenized BENJI units or tokenized gold don’t change the official NAV‑strike or primary‑market mechanics of those funds, instead, they do give professional investors a way to rebalance cash‑like positions across time zones and a bridge between traditional custody and on‑chain wallets for treasury teams that are already comfortable with both.
On the other hand, Nasdaq’s pilot doesn’t make U.S. equities trade overnight starting next week.
What it does is let certain brokers and clients hold and move shares as tokens, potentially enabling faster or atomic settlement in specific workflows, and it sets a regulatory precedent that tokenized equities are acceptable as long as they live under the same rules, surveillance, and disclosure as their non‑tokenized counterparts.
Put together, these are small but telling shifts from “crypto markets versus traditional markets” toward the “same assets, offered across multiple rails and time windows.”
What this means for investors and treasuries
If you’re an ETF investor, family office, or corporate treasury, these developments don’t mean you need to abandon your existing brokers or rush into every tokenization pilot. But there are a few things worth watching.
First, look for tokenization in the fine print rather than the headline. You’re more likely to see phrases like “digital units,” “on‑chain share class,” or “tokenized settlement option” in offering documents and platform menus than a big “we went on‑chain” press release.
Second, check whether the tokenized version is legally the same as the underlying, Nasdaq’s model keeps the same CUSIP and shareholder rights, but some third‑party token wrappers don’t, which matters for voting, corporate actions, and regulatory treatment.
Third, expect more 24/7 liquidity to show up in “boring” asset classes first, like money‑market funds, gold, and large‑cap equity exposures are the prime candidates precisely because institutions already understand their risk profiles and will move incremental capital there before experimenting with narrower or less liquid products.
Most of the impact, at least for now, will be invisible to retail. You may still see the same tickers in your brokerage app and the same ETF names in your portfolio, while what changes underneath is where and how those instruments can move when markets are officially closed.
And how easily institutional players can plug them into tokenized collateral, cross‑border settlement, and cash‑management workflows.
If the current pilots work, the most interesting thing about tokenized markets in a few years may be that you hardly notice them at all.
Crypto market researcher and external contributor at Kriptoworld
Wheel. Steam engine. Bitcoin.
📅 Published: March 20, 2026 • 🕓 Last updated: March 20, 2026
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