Restricting opposition

The SEC has opened permissioned onchain trading to fully backed U.S. stock tokens, but the 32.5-hour trading week on NYSE and Nasdaq leaves automated markets without a live reference price for most of each 168-hour week.

The SEC’s temporary exemption allows qualifying venues to bring buyers and sellers together through permissioned automated market maker pools for tokenized National Market System stocks.

Under the order, each token must provide the same rights and privileges as an equivalent class of conventional stock. The SEC also placed limits on the number of available symbols and trading volume, while requiring public, auditable smart contracts deployed on permissionless blockchains.

Trading venues must stop onchain activity whenever the primary exchange halts the underlying stock. Ordinary closures at night, on weekends or during holidays are treated differently, leaving tokenized venues able to operate when NYSE and Nasdaq are not producing live prices.

Tokenized stocks lose their main price reference after hours

Marcin Kaźmierczak, co-founder and chief operating officer of blockchain oracle provider RedStone, told crypto.news that the missing reference market presents a more serious problem than liquidity fragmentation or arbitrage alone.

An automated market maker sets prices from the assets held in its own pool. Arbitrage traders can correct a price difference by buying in the cheaper market and selling in the more expensive one, but Kaźmierczak said the process weakens when the main U.S. equity market is closed.

“An AMM only prices off its own pool, arbitrage keeps that honest but only while the reference market is open, and NYSE/Nasdaq trade about 32.5 hours a week out of 168.”

During regular U.S. trading hours, market makers can compare an onchain token with the underlying share and trade away gaps. Overnight or during a weekend, however, the stock’s deepest venue is not publishing a current executable price.

At such times, an AMM may react to orders placed inside a much smaller liquidity pool. Large trades can move its quoted price even when investors cannot immediately buy or sell the underlying share to complete the other side of an arbitrage transaction.

The challenge does not fade as activity rises, according to Kaźmierczak. Higher order sizes can increase the price impact of each AMM transaction, while the number of hours without a live primary-market reference stays unchanged.

“It gets harder, not easier. Price impact per AMM trade grows with size, and the hours without a live reference price don’t shrink just because volume goes up.”

SEC rules create separate classes of tokenized stocks

Alongside the timing gap, Kaźmierczak pointed to a split between qualifying ownership tokens and synthetic stock products already available through offshore services.

The SEC order covers tokenized NMS stocks that give holders rights and privileges matching the traditional shares. Kaźmierczak said products such as Robinhood’s Stock Tokens and Kraken’s xStocks use separate structures and are not governed by the new exemption.

As a result, investors could see a conventional U.S. share, a fully backed ownership token covered by the SEC framework, and a synthetic or wrapped product associated with the same company. Each instrument may trade under different rules and carry different rights.

“So you don’t just get tokenized versus traditional, you get two classes of tokenized product for the same underlying stock, priced differently, under different rules,” Kaźmierczak said.

A recent Coinbase stock-token report showed how such rights can vary even when tokens have share backing. Coinbase’s products represent beneficial interests in shares held through an offshore special-purpose company and a regulated U.S. broker, while qualified holders can request redemption under specified compliance rules.

Coinbase has offered Base-native tokens tied to Apple, Nvidia, Meta and Alphabet to eligible non-U.S. investors. Its prospectuses state that legal title generally remains with a trust, meaning wallet holders do not appear directly on the underlying company’s shareholder register.

Redemption also depends on identity, location, sanctions, and anti-money laundering checks. According to the product documents, an onchain buyer who has not completed the process can transfer a token but cannot exercise redemption or voting rights until approved.

Issuer objections address ownership, not synthetic products

For tokens created by an unaffiliated third party, the SEC requires a venue to give the underlying company written notice and an opportunity to object before trading begins. The process addresses a governance dispute already visible between public companies and token issuers.

AMC Entertainment CEO Adam Aron recently objected after learning that Robinhood had created an AMC-linked token without the company’s approval. As previous coverage detailed, Robinhood Assets (Jersey) Limited issued synthetic exposure to more than 190 companies without giving holders ownership, voting power or standard shareholder protections.

Kaźmierczak cited the AMC dispute as an example of why the SEC included issuer notice and objection rights. Yet he said the rule’s effect remains limited because synthetic products outside the exemption do not have to follow the same process.

“The products causing that fight are synthetic and won’t even be governed by today’s framework,” he said.

Under the exemption, qualifying venues must also disclose information about their operations, trading and affiliated activity. The SEC granted separate conditional relief from dealer registration to certain liquidity providers using their own capital in the approved AMM pools.

The relief will expire five years after publication, while the agency has requested public comments on possible changes and subsequent regulatory action.

Around-the-clock markets depend on offchain infrastructure

Other tokenized markets have encountered a similar mismatch between continuous blockchain activity and financial systems that keep fixed operating hours.

In September, DBS and Citi completed a cross-border tokenized-deposit payment from Singapore to New York within minutes on a Saturday. A weekend funding analysis found that the transaction demonstrated continuous money movement but did not establish whether every underlying obligation reached final legal settlement at the same time.

Fedwire does not currently operate continuously through weekends, which can leave banks using tokenized payments dependent on prefunded balances or added liquidity buffers until central bank settlement systems reopen.

Stock tokens face a related data constraint rather than the same settlement issue. Kaźmierczak said keeping share-linked instruments aligned requires reliable price information when the underlying market is open and rules for periods when it is not.

“Price risk scales with data infrastructure. Consent risk scales with governance,” he said. “Neither is solved by this exemption alone, and both compound as volume grows.”

Product structures are also becoming more complex. Kraken recently introduced three xStocks vaults that accept SPYx, QQQx and NVDAx, offering estimated net annual yields of 2%, 2% and 1.8%, respectively, during the initial rollout.

The vaults use deposited tokens as collateral for stablecoin loans before routing funds through cross-chain decentralized finance strategies. Kraken’s disclosures identify liquidation, bad debt, smart-contract, cross-chain, and liquidity risks, while withdrawals generally carry a three-day waiting period and may take longer during market stress.

Binance has expanded its derivatives platform into the $9.6 trillion-a-day foreign exchange market with a 24/7 US dollar-Brazilian real perpetual contract offering up to 100x leverage.

Binance said in a Friday announcement that the USDBRLUSDT contract will begin trading on Monday, giving eligible users continuous exposure to movements between the U.S. dollar and Brazilian real without requiring them to own either currency.

The perpetual contract will settle in Tether’s USDT stablecoin and support leverage of up to 100x. Unlike dated futures, perpetual contracts have no fixed expiry, allowing a trader to keep a position open while meeting the platform’s margin requirements and paying or receiving applicable funding charges.

Access will depend on Binance’s regional restrictions and account requirements. The exchange said users should review their local rules before trading, while its standard futures risk controls and eligibility conditions will apply to the new product.

Binance FX perpetuals will trade through weekend closures

Traditional institutional FX trading generally runs around the clock from Monday through Friday, but liquidity providers and major venues close for the weekend. Binance has designed a dual pricing system to keep the USDBRLUSDT contract operating during that gap.

During standard foreign exchange hours, Binance said the contract’s index price will draw on a weighted group of third-party market data providers. The index is intended to track the underlying USD/BRL exchange rate while those external reference markets are open.

Once regular FX markets close for a weekend or public holiday, Binance will switch to a mechanism derived from its own orderbook. The exchange said an exponentially weighted moving average will calculate prices during those periods, giving more weight to recent observations while smoothing short-lived movements.

Orderbook pricing means the weekend contract price could be shaped by activity taking place solely on the Binance venue while the underlying institutional currency market is closed. When regular FX trading resumes, the contract will again reference external data under the exchange’s stated pricing process.

Binance head of derivatives Shunyet Jan said the structure extends price discovery beyond the operating hours followed by conventional currency venues. According to Jan, the product also gives traders a way to hedge currency exposure or take a directional position at any time.

The Brazilian real can react to domestic interest-rate decisions, fiscal policy, commodity prices, and changes in demand for emerging-market assets. Binance’s contract gives eligible crypto traders a USDT-based instrument for trading such moves, although leverage increases both gains and potential losses.

At 100x leverage, a trader can control a position worth 100 times the collateral committed to it. Binance’s futures risk disclosures warn that adverse price changes can trigger liquidation when the collateral supporting a position falls below the required maintenance margin.

Crypto exchanges are adding traditional market derivatives

Binance’s FX launch follows its earlier expansion into perpetual futures linked to equities and other conventional assets. In May, the exchange added TradFi perpetuals tied to Oracle, Disney, Uber, Cisco and Home Depot, alongside Litecoin.

The May contracts were also settled in USDT but offered leverage of up to 10x, compared with the 100x ceiling announced for USD/BRL. According to the exchange at the time, the equity-linked products were designed to place exposure to traditional and digital markets within the same futures interface.

Binance Wallet separately introduced onchain perpetuals in April. Powered by derivatives venue Aster, the wallet feature covered cryptocurrency pairs, major stocks, exchange-traded funds and commodities through a keyless interface on BNB Smart Chain.

Competition in foreign exchange derivatives has also grown among other centralized exchanges. Bybit introduced 24/7 perpetual contracts tracking EUR/USD, GBP/USD and USD/JPY less than two weeks before Binance’s announcement. Bybit’s contracts settle in USDT and offer maximum leverage of 100x.

Kraken entered the segment earlier, launching FX perpetuals in April 2025 for the euro, British pound, Australian dollar, Japanese yen and Swiss franc. The exchange capped leverage at 50x and built the products on an existing currency business that had offered spot FX trading since 2020.

Kraken reported $5.7 billion in spot foreign exchange volume during the first part of 2025. Its derivatives expansion allowed customers to trade currency price movements without taking delivery of the currencies referenced by each contract.

A similar product expansion has reached self-custodial trading applications. As crypto.news recently reported, Coinbase Wallet launched Pulse Mode for simplified mobile perpetual trading through Hyperliquid, covering eligible crypto, stock, and commodity-linked markets.

Coinbase stated that its wallet-based perpetual service is restricted to non-U.S. users in selected jurisdictions. The company has not announced U.S. access to Pulse Mode or filed a related product notice with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.

U.S. users face separate derivatives restrictions

Binance’s global announcement does not state that the new FX contract will be available to U.S. residents. Binance.com does not serve U.S. users, while the separate Binance.US platform does not offer the same global futures lineup.

American access carries added regulatory weight because leveraged retail commodity and derivatives products fall within CFTC rules under applicable circumstances. The agency requires certain intermediaries and derivatives venues serving U.S. customers to register and follow rules covering customer protection, reporting, and market conduct.

In November 2023, the CFTC announced a $2.85 billion settlement with Binance and former CEO Changpeng Zhao over allegations that the exchange had illegally operated a digital asset derivatives platform and evaded U.S. law. The federal court order required Binance to pay $1.35 billion in disgorgement and a $1.35 billion civil monetary penalty, while Zhao agreed to pay a separate $150 million penalty.

The CFTC said at the time that Binance had offered futures, options, swaps and leveraged retail commodity transactions to U.S. customers without the required registration. Under the settlement, Binance also agreed to strengthen its compliance controls and prevent U.S. customers from accessing its global platform.

For eligible users outside restricted markets, the USD/BRL product provides synthetic exposure rather than ownership of dollars or reais. Contract gains and losses will be calculated and settled in USDT under Binance’s futures terms.

Foreign exchange remains the world’s largest financial market by turnover. According to the Bank for International Settlements’ triennial survey, global over-the-counter FX trading averaged $9.6 trillion per day in April 2025, up 28% from $7.5 trillion in April 2022.

The BIS found that FX swaps remained the largest segment, accounting for $4 trillion in daily turnover. Spot transactions averaged $3 trillion, while outright forwards generated $1.8 trillion per day during the survey period.

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Ethereum’s push to speed up block production is gaining sharper backing from within the institutional community, as Ethereum Institutional (a non-profit) publicly endorsed Ethlabs’ effort to reduce Ethereum block times. The group argued that faster blocks are increasingly necessary as more institutional activity moves onchain.

The momentum also comes amid broader industry experimentation: other networks have already moved to shorten their slot or block targets, framing the changes around latency, confirmations, and competitiveness.

Key takeaways

• Ethereum Institutional backed Ethlabs’ motion to reduce Ethereum block times, saying “more institutional activity moves onchain” and requires Ethereum to be faster.
• Ethlabs points to support from 20 DeFi founders for EIP-8198 (“Quick Slots”), targeting an initial reduction in block time from 12 seconds to 10 seconds.
• Network-level speed initiatives are underway elsewhere, including Zcash’s approval for a faster target block time and Solana’s ongoing slot-time reductions.
• EIP-8198 is connected to Ethereum’s Hegotá upgrade path, with Ethlabs working to merge the proposal’s specifications into the main codebase and identify downstream dependencies.

Ethereum Institutional endorses faster blocks

On Friday, Ethereum Institutional posted on X urging the community to “make Ethereum faster.” The non-profit linked the case for quicker blocks to rising onchain usage by institutional participants, framing block-time reductions as a practical step rather than a purely technical optimization.

The statement aligns with Ethlabs’ broader push around EIP-8198, a proposal designed to shorten Ethereum’s initial block time. According to Ethlabs, the intent is to improve responsiveness and network performance in a competitive environment where other chains are actively adjusting their block or slot schedules.

Ethlabs’ “Quick Slots” gains DeFi backing

Earlier this week, Ethlabs published an article citing support from 20 decentralized finance (DeFi) founders for EIP-8198, also known as “Quick Slots.” The proposal’s stated goal is an initial reduction in Ethereum’s block time target to 10 seconds, down from 12 seconds.

While the initiative is ultimately a protocol-layer change, Ethlabs’ emphasis on DeFi founders is telling: DeFi relies heavily on predictable execution timing for activities such as swaps, lending, and liquidations. For users and developers, even modest changes in block intervals can influence how quickly transactions clear and how often protocols face edge-case timing issues.

Ethlabs also described its development plan: it said it is merging the proposal’s specifications with the main codebase and investigating potential downstream dependencies. That matters because implementation details—what components depend on current timing assumptions—can determine how disruptive or straightforward a protocol upgrade becomes.

Hegotá upgrade path and implementation uncertainty

EIP-8198 was authored in March and later proposed for inclusion in the Hegotá upgrade at the Ethereum core developers meeting on Aug. 6. Ethlabs’ work suggests the proposal is being treated as more than an idea: the organization is actively preparing it for integration into Ethereum’s broader upgrade roadmap.

The article further indicates that Ethereum developers could begin implementing Hegotá in late 2026, following “Glamsterdam,” described as one of the most consequential upgrades of the year, built to improve scalability and harden the mainnet.

Even with this timeline framing, readers should treat the schedule as contingent. Ethereum upgrade sequences depend on engineering readiness, testing outcomes, and consensus priorities among core developers. The key point for observers is that EIP-8198 is already moving through the “proposal-to-integration” pipeline, and Ethlabs is taking steps to handle compatibility considerations early.

Speed competition: Zcash and Solana accelerate their blocks

Ethereum’s faster-block push is unfolding alongside similar efforts in other ecosystems.

On Monday, a majority of Zcash token holders backed a change to cut the network’s target block time to 25 seconds from 75 seconds, as previously reported in coverage of Zcash’s community decision-making around faster blocks and its broader protocol schedule. The relevance for investors and users is straightforward: shorter target intervals can reduce waiting time and improve the real-world responsiveness of onchain settlement.

Solana has also been actively adjusting timing parameters. In August, Solana reduced its slot time from 400 milliseconds to 350 milliseconds, according to earlier reporting. And in June, the Solana Foundation shared plans to further reduce slot times from 400ms to 200ms, arguing that the change would improve latency and speed confirmations across the network.

These changes show a common industry pattern: chain designers are treating time-to-finality and execution responsiveness as competitive features, not just internal performance metrics. For Ethereum, where institutions and DeFi users care deeply about predictable execution windows, block-time reductions can improve user experience and potentially reduce friction in time-sensitive flows.

Why the block-time debate matters now

Block-time reductions are often discussed as a tradeoff between speed and stability, because faster cadence can increase pressure on infrastructure and sequencing assumptions. In this case, Ethlabs’ framing—coupled with Ethereum Institutional’s call for faster execution as institutional onchain activity grows—suggests the community is prioritizing timeliness as a practical necessity.

At the same time, the initiatives across Zcash and Solana underscore a strategic tension. If other networks continue to shorten their block or slot targets, they may capture users who prioritize low-latency interactions, particularly in trading and DeFi contexts. Ethereum’s move toward EIP-8198 and its pathway into Hegotá can be read as a response to that competitive dynamic.

What remains uncertain is how quickly and smoothly these protocol-level changes can be introduced, and what the final performance and operational impacts will be under mainnet conditions. The next signals to watch are concrete implementation updates from core developers after the relevant upgrade stages, along with ongoing analysis of dependencies and risks tied to shorter block targets.