Written by: Protos
Compiled by: Chopper, Foresight News
For years, the crypto industry has promoted blockchain with a unified claim: digital assets can trade 24/7, while traditional financial exchanges close at 4 p.m. and don't reopen until the next day.
This week, the world's largest clearinghouse completely refuted this argument.
The National Securities Clearing Corporation (NSCC), a stock business subsidiary of The Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC), handles quadrillion-dollar levels of securities transactions annually.
A recent announcement revealed that NSCC has now achieved 24-hour clearing operations for each business day. For reference, DTCC processed approximately $3.7 quadrillion in securities transactions last year, and its stock clearing system can now process trades for traditional financial assets like stocks overnight.
DTCC is phasing into a 24/7 clearing system. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) first approved rule amendments, client testing was completed earlier this year; major exchanges like Nasdaq plan to launch overnight trading sessions from this year through 2027.
Although NSCC states it operates 24 hours a day, five days a week, the institution admits that while the core clearing system runs non-stop, some supporting systems will pause for one hour on weekday nights for technical maintenance.
This extension of clearing hours by DTCC deals a significant blow to the crypto industry's core narrative of "never closing." The only remaining point of differentiation for crypto is that DTCC clearing is only available on weekdays, while crypto markets cover weekdays + weekends; if this 5x24 model runs smoothly and market demand continues to grow, DTCC may further open weekend clearing services in the future.
DTCC Repeatedly Dashes Crypto Believers' Hopes
Some crypto market investors still cling to hope, attempting to interpret this news as positive for the industry: "DTCC officially launching 24/5 clearing is paving the way for comprehensive asset tokenization." This interpretation is strongly subjective and deviates from reality.
While tokenization of traditional assets like stocks has seen small-scale pilot implementations, DTCC is under no obligation to use any public blockchain and is more likely to develop its own private distributed ledger.
In fact, this DTCC update is just another example of it repeatedly disappointing crypto enthusiasts over the years. Whenever DTCC announces any project related to blockchain, the crypto community forcefully attaches its own optimistic expectations.
For a long time, supporters of public chains like Ethereum and the XRP Ledger have repeatedly predicted that DTCC would integrate with related systems, yet such implementations have never materialized.
In actual production system selection, the clearinghouse has consistently prioritized closed, private, permissioned infrastructure over public chains. In 2022, DTCC launched Project Ion, a settlement platform built on a private permissioned ledger, not using any public chain; subsequent commercial projects have followed the same selection logic.
In December 2025, DTCC partnered with Digital Asset to tokenize U.S. Treasuries on the permissioned Canton Network. Public chain developers criticized the solution's high entry barriers, but this did not change the institution's decision.
XRP holders' expectations have been particularly strong. As Protos previously reported, none of DTCC's current clearing businesses are connected to the XRP Ledger. A directory published earlier this year did not change the situation, only being over-interpreted by the Ripple community.
In summary, the world's leading clearinghouse has successfully implemented a 24/7 clearing system without using any public blockchain, nor showing any traces of on-chain business that crypto enthusiasts have long predicted.
XRP, frequently linked to DTCC by the crypto market, was priced at $1.05 at the time of writing, down about 20% over the past 30 days and halved compared to its price a year ago.
The traditional finance industry's 24/7 market has launched smoothly relying on its existing mature infrastructure, and the crypto industry did not get a ticket in.
