FTSE Russell's digital assets chief: "Every big traditional asset class" wants 24/7 trading

Why every asset class suddenly wants 24/7 markets

Kristen Mierzwa, Head of Digital Assets at FTSE Russell, says her firm has calculated indices 24/7 for digital assets since January 2019, covering 500 assets including LINK, Bitcoin and Ethereum, while traditional asset classes like equities, fixed income and commodities stayed on standard hours. She says that is changing fast across the industry, driven partly by what happened when Hyperliquid's perpetual product traded oil over a weekend.

"Every big traditional asset class is thinking I want that for my asset class, too." — Kristen Mierzwa

She ties the shift to two forces: perpetuals proving there is real volume and price discovery outside normal hours, and tokenization making continuous trading operationally possible. In both cases, she argues, someone needs to be a trusted source of price, and she believes index providers and exchanges should be the ones calculating it rather than ceding that role to others.

How the Russell indices are already moving onchain

Mierzwa describes concrete projects already underway: OTC swaps referencing the Russell 2000 happening on the Canton Network through DerivNex, and a DTCC project tokenizing constituents of the Russell 1000, using it as a transparent "pick list" or starting universe for new tokenized products. She says the Russell 1000 works well for this because its methodology is transparent, with no quality screens, and it adds IPOs quickly, citing SpaceX tokens as an example of recent interest.

She says FTSE Russell works with Chainlink to distribute its data across multiple chains—Ethereum, Avalanche, Stellar—rather than having to push every index onto every chain itself. On demand, she says it is currently skewed: interest in trading these tokenized products 24/7 is coming mostly from outside the US, since many tokenized products are structured through special purpose vehicles without a real secondary market, while US-based investors already have access to the underlying Russell 1000 equities during market hours anyway.

Blended baskets, stablecoin pricing, and why tokenization requires buying layer ones

Mierzwa highlights an index called the "Old Crypto Cap 10," blending the ten largest assets on the planet—Bitcoin, gold, silver and roughly the "Mag 7" stocks, equal-weighted—something she says is nearly impossible inside a traditional 40 Act or 33 Act fund wrapper but becomes simple once everything is just a token. She also describes expanding stablecoin coverage from 12 to 95 by pricing off decentralized exchanges rather than only centralized ones, calling it "a big unlock."

Asked for an investor view on Bitcoin, Ethereum, Hyperliquid and Zcash over five to ten years, she does not give price targets but argues tokenization logically requires exposure to the underlying layer ones.

"If you really do believe in tokenization, then you believe in crypto because you can't do it without these layer ones. They're not running on vaporware." — Kristen Mierzwa

She leaves open exactly how large the shift could get in dollar terms, saying only that FTSE Russell's systems are being readied so that when clients ask for fully crypto-priced or blended indices, "we're like, no problem."