Nasdaq CEO Adena Friedman stated at TOKEN2049 in Singapore that tokenizing government bonds, stocks, money market funds, and cash flows could make collateral more liquid, thereby releasing hundreds of billions of dollars trapped in the global financial system. She told CNBC that once these tools and cash flows are tokenized, the collateral will become very liquid.

She attributed part of the rising institutional interest to the U.S. passing the Genius Act, which established a regulatory framework for stablecoins. She said that if currency can be tokenized, capital flows can also be tokenized. She did not provide a breakdown of the hundreds of billions nor did she say this is revenue already realized by Nasdaq.

The same statement points to 24-hour trading. Friedman mentioned that if the market operates seven days a week, institutions and banks must continuously manage risks and collateral; currently, much of this work is done during market closures. She anticipates that artificial intelligence will play a larger role in real-time risk control. This is an infrastructure assessment, not an indication that new trading hours have been launched.

Nasdaq has already taken corresponding actions. In September 2025, it submitted a proposal to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to implement tokenized settlement for stocks and exchange-traded funds in the main market, rather than creating a separate sandbox. In March 2026, it proposed a framework for equity token design, emphasizing issuer choice and that tokenized shares would be subject to the same rules as ordinary shares.

Buyers are banks and institutions looking to reduce pressure on clearing and brokerage collateral, while sellers are clearinghouses and brokerage systems that still update collateral based on market closure batches. The event is driven by conference speeches, not transactions. Beneficiaries are exchanges and custodians that can simultaneously conduct tokenized settlements and stablecoin cash flows; those under pressure are intermediaries that rely on market closure windows to manage risks and profit from collateral retention.

Source: Public Information