Miami Beach, FL – A growing group of Wall Street and crypto executives say the financial system is headed for a tipping point as markets shift from human-paced processes to machine-driven activity that runs around the clock.
“We’re moving to a world where transactions happen at a speed that no human can track,” said Sandy Kaul, head of digital assets and innovation at Franklin Templeton, during a panel on the future of capital markets at Consensus in Miami on Tuesday. At the same time, “almost all processes in the capital markets today are built for people, and none of them will stand against what is coming,” she added.
The tension between these two ideas – faster, automated markets and legacy systems designed for manual monitoring – was at the center of the conversation.
For decades, financial markets have relied on layered processes to handle trades. System batch transactions, reconcile records and settle trades hours or even days later. That structure dates back to a time when physical stock certificates moved across Wall Street by hand.
Now the blockchain infrastructure is starting to remove these limitations. Panelists pointed to tokenization — the process of turning assets like stocks or money market funds into digital tokens — as a key shift. These tokens can move instantly, settle in seconds and operate continuously.
“We’re dismantling a system that’s been in place for 50 years and going back to settling one transaction at a time,” Kaul said, describing how real-time settlement could replace today’s batch-based model.
This change has practical consequences. In a tokenized system, an investor’s cash can remain fully invested until the exact moment it is spent. “Every penny of my earnings is fully invested from the moment I earn it to the moment I spend it,” said Christine Moy, partner at Apollo, outlining a future where idle cash largely disappears.
The same logic applies to large companies. Instead of holding cash across multiple accounts worldwide, companies could pool funds into income-generating assets and convert them only when payments are due.
However, major obstacles remain. While blockchain networks can already process transactions quickly, some panelists argued that the industry lacks the regulations and standards needed for institutions to operate at scale.
“We’ve solved the transaction problem. What’s missing is a standard for governance,” said Tom Zschach, former chief innovation officer at Swift, pointing to the need for clear rules around ownership, compliance and permissions.
That gap is important for large financial firms, where reliability often outweighs speed. “If there’s a chance it might not work, that’s a non-starter. What institutions need is certainty,” he said.
At the same time, competitive pressure is increasing. As newer platforms offer faster and more flexible financial services, traditional businesses risk losing customers if they don’t adapt.
Overall, the discussion suggests that the next phase of market development will not only be about faster trades. It will focus on rebuilding the underlying systems to support continuous, automated flows of capital – without breaking the trust on which global finance depends.
