Matt Hougan, chief investment officer at Bitwise Asset Management, says he has dramatically revised his timeline for when on-chain finance will go mainstream. In a blog post titled “The weekend that changed finance,” Hougan described how crypto platforms became the primary venue for trading tokenized assets after US-Israel strikes on Iran occurred while traditional markets were closed. He previously estimated that traditional finance would take five to 10 years to meaningfully shift on-chain — now he believes it could happen much sooner.

According to Hougan, blockchain’s 24/7 trading rails exposed the limitations of stock exchanges and T+1 settlement systems during the geopolitical shock. While legacy markets were offline, on-chain platforms processed billions in real-time trades, demonstrating how decentralized infrastructure can operate continuously when traditional systems cannot.