SEC Holds All-Day Trading Symposium! Paul Atkins: Discussing Extending US Stock Trading to 24 Hours to Align with Cryptocurrency Market

Coin Circle (120btc.CoM): In the early hours of Friday, Beijing time, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) held an important symposium at its headquarters in Washington, focusing on how to indefinitely extend the trading hours of the traditional securities market to after-hours and holidays. This high-profile seminar coincided with the SEC's recently released "tokenized securities trading" innovation exemption order, reflecting the regulatory body's strategic intent to break the century-old statutory trading limits on Wall Street and align with the trading rhythm of the cryptocurrency market.

SEC Chairman Paul Atkins made it clear to many securities lawyers that significant market events are never limited by the statutory trading bell during the day. Moderately extending the trading window will significantly shorten investors' response time to key macro information, thereby granting the market higher pricing efficiency.

Policy Exemption Accelerates On-Chain Adoption

While focusing on trading hours, Atkins also elaborated on the newly implemented tokenized securities exemption framework. This "innovation exemption" mechanism will allow compliant companies to apply for a regulatory grace period of five years, enabling them to explore blockchain trading networks while avoiding the constraints of cumbersome traditional securities regulations.

Regulators believe that the deep application of tokenization technology is expected to enable the securities industry to achieve real-time inventory management. This leap in underlying infrastructure not only significantly reduces the probability of systemic settlement failures but also fundamentally compresses or even completely blocks the space for malicious short-selling operations. Currently, Atkins has requested the SEC to initiate a special assessment internally, aiming to find the optimal balance between fostering a growth-friendly innovative environment and strengthening market conduct standards.

Facing the Backward Pressure of the Cryptocurrency Ecosystem

At the symposium, SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce candidly stated, "The cryptocurrency market never sleeps." This assertion essentially reveals the generational lag in trading efficiency within traditional financial structures. However, she also pragmatically and incisively analyzed the structural challenges posed by extending trading windows: major financial institutions are generally concerned that non-core trading hours will lead to significantly widened bid-ask spreads, severe price fluctuations, reduced tolerance for technical failure recovery, and increased difficulty in monitoring the market across time zones.

Peirce further pointed out that during nighttime hours, when human intervention is severely limited, false rumors on social media can easily trigger liquidity crises and cause stock price crashes. The consequences of extending trading hours mean that while capital markets capture around-the-clock opportunities, they must also face around-the-clock risk exposure.

Defending the Status of a Global Financial Center

In the face of these multiple resistances, the SEC's stance on advancing underlying reforms remains exceptionally resolute. Atkins revealed that several preparatory works for achieving all-day operations are being actively promoted and have even completed acceptance. This means that official agencies have moved beyond purely theoretical discussions and have substantively initiated the underlying transformation of trading clearing systems and the reconstruction of compliance frameworks.

From promoting the CLARITY Act to implementing tokenized securities exemption channels, and now fully preparing for 24/7 all-day trading, this series of actions is highly unified under the current SEC leadership's policy logic of reducing institutional friction and catalyzing market innovation, with the ultimate goal of consolidating the absolute dominance of the United States as a global financial center.

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