“Time is money. » Benjamin Franklin did not foresee the blockchain, but his formula summarizes what Adena Friedman came to say in Singapore. The head of Nasdaq estimates that tokenization could free tens of billions of dollars tied up as collateral in the global financial system. This money sleeps because the markets close in the evening and on weekends.
The American stock exchange operator has already placed its pawns, between the green light from the SEC and 100 million dollars invested in Kraken. All he has to do is keep the machine running without ever turning it off.
Tokenization of collateral or the money that sleeps on Wall Street
The scene takes place at TOKEN2049, the crypto high mass in Singapore. In an interview published by CNBC on October 9, Adena Friedman explains a simple mechanics. Banks and funds deposit securities every day as collateral for their positions (collateral, in the jargon). Treasury bills, stocks and money market fund shares then remain blocked for hours, sometimes days.
His solution is contained in one sentence. “If you tokenize all these instruments as well as the money flows, the collateral becomes very fluid,” she explains. Tokenize means representing an asset with a digital token transferable on a blockchain, at any time and in a few minutes. The manager mentions tens of billions of dollars of capital thus released, without detailing her calculation.
She dates the trigger from the adoption of the Genius Act, the American law which has regulated stablecoins since July 2025. “If we can tokenize money, then we can tokenize capital flows,” she summarizes. According to her, individuals were “ten years ahead” of institutions in demanding continuously open markets.
Nasdaq and tokenized stocks: an already full schedule
The speech is based on concrete files. The SEC approved Nasdaq's September 2025 application on March 18, 2026, which allows certain securities to be settled in token form. This concerns Russell 1000 stocks and large index ETFs, traded in the same order book and at the same price as traditional securities.
Schedules are also changing. Nasdaq is targeting December 6, 2026 to open a night session and increase its trading day to nearly 11 p.m., five days a week. The regulator's green light, granted in April, remains conditional on the broadcast of prices during the night.
The piping advances at the same pace. Central custodian DTCC has signed up more than 50 institutions for its tokenization service due in October. BlackRock, JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs are among them. A Broadridge study published in July gives a measure of the appetite, since 84% of the 200 North American executives surveyed rank tokenization among their strategic priorities.
Nasdaq open 24 hours a day: stewardship must follow
So much for the promise. The opposite comes from Friedman herself, who judges that the stock market infrastructure is “the easiest part” of the transition to 24 hours a day. Financial institutions are now taking advantage of closing hours to update their systems and recalculate their risks. Without pause, everything must run “in real time, all the time”.
Nasdaq is banking on artificial intelligence to fill the hole. Its risk management platform already includes digital agents who are currently limited to recommendations, and which banks could one day let act alone. Another downside is that the manager admits that not all assets are liquid enough to trade day and night. And the pilot project validated in March does not change anything in the settlement period, still set at one working day (T+1) because the conversion into tokens only occurs after the fact.
Arjun Sethi, co-director of Kraken, cites the case of a foreign company with a turnover of $25 million which is seeking access to American markets in this way.
