Wall Street warns human-built markets can’t keep up with machine-speed trading
Legacy financial systems face pressure as tokenization and real-time trading push markets toward always-on, automated infrastructure, panelists at Consensus in Miami said on Tuesday.
Wall Street warns human-built markets can’t keep up with machine-speed trading
Legacy financial systems face pressure as tokenization and real-time trading push markets toward always-on, automated infrastructure, panelists at Consensus in Miami said on Tuesday.
Wall Street and crypto executives warn that markets are nearing a breaking point as 24/7, machine-driven trading collides with legacy systems built for slower, human-paced processes.
Blockchain-based tokenization promises real-time, continuous settlement that could keep both individual and corporate cash fully invested until the moment it is spent, reducing idle balances across the system.
Panelists said the main obstacle is not transaction speed but the lack of shared governance standards and rules, which large institutions see as essential to maintaining reliability and trust as markets are rebuilt for automated capital flows.
The tension between those two ideas — faster, automated markets and legacy systems designed for manual oversight — sat at the center of the conversation.
For decades, financial markets have relied on layered processes to handle trades. Systems batch transactions, reconcile records and settle trades hours or even days later. That structure dates back to a time when physical stock certificates moved across Wall Street by hand.
Now, blockchain infrastructure is starting to remove those constraints. Panelists pointed to tokenization — the process of turning assets like stocks or money market funds into digital tokens — as a key shift. These tokens can move instantly, settle in seconds and operate continuously.
“We are unwinding a system that’s been in place for 50 years and going back to settling one transaction at a time,” Kaul said, describing how real-time settlement could replace today’s batch-based model.
That shift has practical implications. In a tokenized system, an investor’s cash could remain fully invested until the exact moment it is spent. “Every penny of my earnings is fully invested from the moment I earn it to the moment that I spend it,” Christine Moy, partner at Apollo, said, outlining a future where idle cash largely disappears.
The same logic applies to large corporations. Instead of holding cash across multiple accounts worldwide, companies could pool funds into yield-generating assets and convert them only when payments are due.
Still, major hurdles remain. While blockchain networks can already process transactions quickly, some panelists argued that the industry lacks the rules and standards needed for institutions to operate at scale.
“We’ve solved the transaction problem. What’s missing is a standard for governance,” said Tom Zschach, former chief innovation officer at Swift, pointing to the need for clear rules around ownership, compliance and permissions.
That gap matters for large financial firms, where reliability often outweighs speed. “If there’s a chance it might not work, it’s a non-starter. What institutions need is certainty,” he said.
At the same time, competitive pressure is rising. As newer platforms offer faster and more flexible financial services, traditional firms risk losing clients if they fail to adapt.
Taken together, the discussion suggests the next phase of market evolution will not just be about faster trades. It will center on rebuilding the underlying systems so they can support continuous, automated flows of capital—without breaking the trust that global finance depends on.
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The fund lets institutions earn yield on stablecoins while moving cash onchain with round-the-clock access.
What to know:
State Street Investment Management and Galaxy Asset Management have launched the State Street Galaxy Onchain Liquidity Sweep Fund (SWEEP), a tokenized cash-management vehicle for large investors.
SWEEP lets qualified institutional investors park stablecoins in a yield-generating fund that operates continuously on blockchain infrastructure, starting on Solana and expanding to Ethereum…
