BNY, the world’s largest custodian bank, is developing an always-on settlement system that could enable US Treasury transactions to settle 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, as traditional financial infrastructure adapts to the growth of tokenised assets.
The bank is aiming to launch a system by 2027 that supports settlement for both conventional and tokenised US Treasuries, according to reports from CoinDesk and Bloomberg.
The move comes as demand grows for blockchain-based financial infrastructure, with stablecoins and tokenised money market funds increasingly becoming a source of demand for US government debt.
BNY plans to begin testing tokenised Treasuries on a private blockchain later this year before expanding settlement capabilities across global trading hours in Asia, Europe and the US.
The bank has already taken steps towards this ambition, recently processing an overnight Treasury transaction using reserves held by two stablecoin issuers.
The transaction involved Ripple’s RLUSD stablecoin and OpenEden’s USDO stablecoin, demonstrating how blockchain-based assets can operate outside traditional market hours.
BNY’s goal is to bridge the gap between digital asset markets, which operate continuously, and traditional Treasury settlement systems, which remain restricted by conventional banking hours.
Stablecoins and tokenised money market funds have become some of the fastest-growing areas of digital assets, with more than $315 billion of assets now flowing through these structures.
However, a key challenge remains: digital assets can be created, transferred and redeemed at any time, while the underlying Treasury assets supporting them still rely on traditional settlement infrastructure.
This mismatch creates liquidity and redemption challenges, particularly during weekends and overnight periods when investors can transact on-chain but the underlying assets cannot immediately move.
BNY’s planned 24/7 settlement capability aims to address this issue by creating a more seamless connection between blockchain-based finance and traditional markets.
