Tokenised securities: trading after Wall Street closes does not remove constraints

Availability depends on the product and venue

Buying exposure to a US share after its stock exchange closes is becoming possible through certain tokenised securities. The novelty concerns more than the digital medium: it also concerns the hours during which an instrument can change owner. However, a blockchain operating continuously does not automatically make every product continuously available. Issuers and platforms define their own trading, issuance and redemption windows. The same asset name may therefore cover very different conditions depending on the channel used.

Documents consulted on 19 October 2026 demonstrate this diversity. Kraken distinguishes operations on its platform from the use of xStocks on-chain, with extended hours varying by offering. Ondo describes issuance and redemption generally available continuously during weekdays, with a weekend extension for certain references. Technical interruptions, market events and corporate actions remain possible. These indications therefore do not mean that an immediate exit at the desired price is guaranteed at every hour.

Digital representation does not define the rights

A token bearing a company's name is not necessarily a share issued by that company. The SEC distinguishes, in particular, securities tokenised by their own issuer from instruments created by a third party. Depending on the structure, a holder may have different rights from a traditional shareholder. An intermediary may hold the underlying assets and issue a product linked to their value. That intermediary's soundness and the contractual arrangements then become important elements of the exposure.

Kraken specifies that xStocks do not provide traditional shareholder rights such as voting. Ondo also states that its tokens are not themselves the shares or funds they represent and do not confer a right to receive the underlying assets. These two specific offerings do not, by themselves, represent all the possible forms that tokenisation can take. They primarily illustrate the need to read a product's conditions rather than infer its rights from its ticker or appearance in a digital wallet.

Extended hours require liquidity to be examined

When the primary market is closed, the token may continue circulating while certain operations involving the reference asset are unavailable under the same conditions. Secondary trading, issuance of new tokens and redemption are three distinct processes. The way these separate processes interact influences whether a difference between the token's price and that of its reference asset can be corrected, and through which operations. A permanently displayed quote therefore does not, on its own, indicate market depth, transaction cost or reliability of the value shown by an interface.

The regulatory framework is developing in parallel. In September 2026, the SEC presented a temporary, conditional exemption for specified tokenised-securities trading venues. This does not indiscriminately authorise every instrument for every audience. Access still depends on the country, client status and offering concerned. The issue therefore extends beyond eliminating a closing time: it involves connecting continuously operating infrastructure with assets, rights and protections whose rules remain precisely defined. Extended hours replace none of these checks. The conditions governing access, trading and redemption must continue to be read at the level of the particular product.