OKX Founder Says Commodity Pricing Will Shift to Crypto Trading and Stablecoin Settlement
Star, the founder of OKX, stated that in the future, price discovery for commodities will transition from intermittent matching at traditional exchanges to a 24/7 digital market driven by global crypto trading platforms and settled in stablecoins, enabling continuous pricing and settlement around the clock.
Currently, leading platforms including Binance have entered the commodity market through perpetual contracts for gold, silver, and other tokenized commodities. Binance's commodity perpetual contracts alone have accumulated a trading volume exceeding $153 billion within a few months, with daily transaction counts reaching over 6 million, indicating that the model of using crypto infrastructure for commodity price discovery has taken shape in high-frequency derivatives trading.
In terms of market mechanisms, crypto exchanges undertake price discovery through 24/7 matching and high-frequency derivatives trading, while stablecoins and tokenized commodities facilitate global settlement and cross-border capital flow: buyers include commodity traders, market makers, and arbitrage funds needing to hedge or speculate on prices at any time, while sellers are crypto platforms providing perpetual contracts, spot tokens, and stablecoin channels. As liquidity and institutional participation increase, the marginal pricing power of some commodities is expected to shift from traditional exchanges with time-segmented trading to 24/7, high-leverage, on-chain derivatives and spot markets priced in stablecoins, bringing long-term structural pressure to traditional pricing centers and bank settlement networks.
Source: Public Information
ABAB AI Insight
From historical behavior, the expansion of crypto exchanges in "price discovery" from Bitcoin to commodities is not a sudden change but an extension of the path: research has shown that centralized exchanges and perpetual contract markets have long dominated price discovery for assets like Bitcoin and Ethereum, with traditional futures markets like CME sometimes being "led" by crypto-native derivatives during certain periods, where information is first reflected in 24/7 contract markets before being transmitted to spot and offline markets. After 2024, major platforms began replicating this model for commodities like gold and silver—first launching perpetual contracts and leveraged products, then supplementing spot exposure with tokenized commodities. Star's statement frames this migration of price discovery from crypto assets to traditional commodities under the "future main path" rather than as a marginal business.
In terms of capital pathways, "commodity pricing driven by crypto exchanges and stablecoins" implies a redistribution of interest spreads, fees, and capital utilization returns: traditionally, the profits from commodity price discovery and settlement have mainly been concentrated in regulated futures exchanges, clearinghouses, and large banks' commodity trading and financing businesses; when platforms like Binance and OKX use stablecoins as margin and settlement tools for exposures in gold, crude oil, etc., the benefits from margin interest, trading fees, and improved capital turnover efficiency will remain more with crypto platforms and their partnered stablecoin issuers. At the same time, institutions like Circle are launching StableFX and other stablecoin forex engines to provide 24/7 stablecoin-to-stablecoin settlement for institutions, which, when combined with tokenized commodities, can complete an integrated cycle of "commodities × FX × capital" without relying on traditional bank working hours, allowing some cross-border trade and hedging needs to bypass certain intermediary steps of banks.
In comparison, this direction is highly analogous to the on-chain 24/7 tokenized securities platform being established by NYSE, as well as the tokenized T-bills and money market funds launched by some exchanges: traditional pricing centers (like COMEX, LME) rely on fixed trading hours and T+1 or even longer settlement cycles, while on-chain platforms attempt to pull "pricing" and "settlement" into a 24/7 framework, allowing stablecoins or tokenized bonds to assume the roles of "currency and collateral." Within this framework, Binance has already achieved millions of daily transactions and over $100 billion in cumulative trading volume on gold perpetual contracts, indicating that at least for participants seeking price differentials, hedging, and short-term leveraged exposure, "gold prices on crypto infrastructure" have sufficient reference significance; Star's judgment positions platforms like OKX as the "next COMEX" within this structure, rather than merely as crypto asset matching points.
From a structural perspective, this represents a linkage of "pricing power transfer + capital concentration": regarding pricing power, the combination of 24/7 derivatives and stablecoin settlement allows information to be quickly reflected in prices at any time through high-frequency trading, capital flows, and funding rates, which will weaken the weight of single-period opening prices and official fixing prices for certain commodities, transforming the price formation process from "opening and closing moments + on-site quotes" to "around-the-clock, cross-regional liquidity fields." Regarding capital concentration, whoever controls the 24/7 matching engine, stablecoin channels, and compliant tokenization capabilities sits at the routing point of the "new pricing center": trading fees, market-making profits, funding rates, and reserve asset spreads will further concentrate among a few global platforms and stablecoin issuers, while traditional commodity brokers and regional exchanges, if unable to access this infrastructure, may long-term become "access ports" rather than "pricing hubs."
ABAB News · Cognitive Law
The market no longer asks "what time does it open," but rather "who decides the price within 24 hours."
Commodity digitization is not just an additional trading channel, but a migration of interest spreads from the futures hall to the matching engine.
When stablecoins become the settlement base, whoever controls the on-chain order book will take the pricing power of real-world commodities.