24 Exchange, which wants to let users trade stocks 24/7 like crypto, raises $14.25M led by Point72 Ventures; SEC approval or rejection is expected in 2022
Alexander Osipovich / Wall Street Journal : Tweets: @dannycrichton Tweets: Danny Crichton / @dannycrichton : Interesting that LTSE wants to make trading more thoughtful, and 24 Exchange wants it to be even more like stonks https://twitter.com/...
Context & Ripple Effects
24 Exchange is mounting the same kind of challenge the SEC entertained when it approved Eric Ries' Long-Term Stock Exchange in 2019: win a national exchange charter by attacking an orthodoxy of market structure — in this case, fixed trading hours. The $14.25M round led by Point72 Ventures funds the push through the regulatory endgame, with an approval-or-rejection decision expected in 2022.
The bet looks prescient in hindsight. Retail appetite for off-hours trading was validated when Robinhood rolled out 24-hour weekday sessions in 2023, and by 2026 both incumbents were building parallel always-on venues — NYSE's tokenized Digital Trading Platform with Securitize and Nasdaq's 24/7 framework with Kraken — effectively conceding that the hours 24 Exchange wanted to abolish were worth reclaiming on their own terms.
First-order effects
- An SEC approval in 2022 would give 24 Exchange a national exchange license purpose-built for round-the-clock stock trading, putting a regulated challenger directly against NYSE and Nasdaq's control of market hours.
- Point72 Ventures' $14.25M carries 24 Exchange through the build-out and regulatory review window ahead of the SEC's expected 2022 decision.
Second-order effects
- Robinhood's earlier move to 24-hour weekday trading proved retail demand exists outside market hours, so an approved 24 Exchange pressures incumbent exchanges to extend coverage rather than cede off-hours volume to a rival venue.
- The incumbents' eventual response — partnering with crypto-native firms on tokenized 24/7 systems instead of stretching legacy sessions — shows the challenger thesis pushed even the NYSE and Nasdaq to adopt blockchain-based trading rails.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, US equity market structure bifurcates between legacy daytime sessions and blockchain-based continuous venues, with SEC licensing choices determining where liquidity — and therefore the exchange business — settles.
- Exchange charters become the scarce asset in the shift to always-on markets: whoever holds one can define trading hours, making regulatory approval, not technology, the gating factor for new market models.
The trend: Equity trading is converging toward crypto's always-on model, with licensed challengers like 24 Exchange forcing incumbent exchanges onto tokenized 24/7 rails.