MIAMI BEACH, Fla. — A growing group of Wall Street and crypto executives say the financial system is heading toward a breaking point as markets shift from human-paced processes to machine-driven activities that operate around the clock.
“We are moving into a world where transactions occur at speeds that humans cannot track,” Sandy Kaul, head of digital assets and innovation at Franklin Templeton, said during a panel discussion on the future of capital markets at Consensus in Miami on Tuesday. At the same time, she added, “almost every process in today’s capital markets is built for humans, and none can withstand what’s coming.”
At the heart of the conversation was the tension between two ideas: a faster, automated market and a legacy system designed for manual oversight.
For decades, financial markets have relied on layered processes to process transactions. The system processes transactions in batches, reconciles records, and settles transactions hours or days later. This structure dates back to the days when physical stock certificates were moved around Wall Street by hand.
Blockchain infrastructure is now starting to remove these constraints. Panelists pointed to tokenization, the process of turning assets such as stocks and money market funds into digital tokens, as a key change. These tokens move instantly, settle in seconds, and operate continuously.
“We are dismantling the system that has been in place for 50 years and returning to settling one transaction at a time,” Kaul said, explaining how real-time payments will replace today’s batch-based models.
This change has practical implications. In a tokenized system, an investor’s cash can remain fully invested until the moment it is spent. “From the moment I earn it to the moment I spend it, all of my income is fully invested,” said Christine Moy, a partner at Apollo, outlining a future in which there would be little idle cash.
The same logic applies to large companies. Instead of holding cash in multiple accounts around the world, companies can pool their funds into yield-producing assets and exchange them only when payments are due.
Still, major hurdles remain. Although blockchain networks can already process transactions quickly, some panelists argued that the industry lacks the rules and standards needed for institutions to operate at scale.
“We’ve solved the trading problem. What’s missing is a standard of governance,” said Tom Schach, Swift’s former chief innovation officer, pointing to the need for clear rules around ownership, compliance and permissions.
This gap is important for large financial companies, where reliability often trumps speed. “If it can go wrong, it’s a dud. What institutions need is certainty,” he said.
At the same time, competitive pressures are increasing. As new platforms offer faster and more flexible financial services, traditional businesses risk losing customers if they fail to adapt.
Taken together, this argument suggests that the next stage in market evolution is about more than just faster trading. It will focus on rebuilding the underlying systems to support continuous and automated flows of capital without compromising the trust on which global finance depends.
