Markets no longer move in isolation. A single macro headline can ripple through equities, commodities, and crypto within minutes, often outside traditional trading sessions. Yet access to those markets remains fragmented, split across platforms, accounts, and operating hours that reflect an earlier era of finance.
This growing gap between how traders operate and how markets are structured is what prompted Phemex to introduce 24/7 TradFi Futures trading and expand futures-based access to traditional assets such as equities and precious metals.
To understand why this move matters now, we spoke with Federico Variola, CEO of Phemex, about trading behavior, access, and the infrastructure beginning to connect traditional finance and crypto more closely.
Trading behavior has outpaced the current systems
Trading behavior has changed in ways market access has struggled to match. Active traders no longer approach markets as isolated environments, processing information across asset classes and time zones as it arrives and forming views that cut across equities, crypto, commodities, and macro developments.
“What’s pushing this shift is trader behavior,” Federico Variola says. “Traders already operate across markets.”
Information now moves instantly and globally, but access hasn’t adapted at the same pace. Capital remains split across platforms, execution depends on different trading hours, and risk is managed through systems that were never designed to work together.
“A trader might have a view on multiple markets at once,” Variola explains. “But capital, execution, and risk management are still divided across different platforms and schedules.”
This mismatch becomes most visible when markets close.
“Markets respond to information, not exchange schedules,” Variola says.
For traders, this creates a practical constraint: they remain exposed to developments they cannot immediately respond to, even as information continues to shape prices elsewhere.
Expectations shifted and futures play a central role
For a long time, traders accepted these constraints as part of how markets worked. That began to change as crypto markets normalized continuous access.
“Crypto introduced a model where price discovery, execution, and risk management happen continuously,” Variola says. “Once traders experienced that environment, expectations changed.”
Monitoring positions in real time and responding as information emerged stopped feeling exceptional. Continuous engagement became familiar and those expectations didn’t remain confined to crypto markets.
As traders grew accustomed to always-on environments, fixed trading windows in traditional markets started to feel increasingly restrictive. The question was no longer whether exposure continued outside trading hours, but how traders could stay engaged when access would otherwise pause.
This is where futures become relevant.
As expectations around continuous access shifted, futures emerged as the most practical way for traditional markets to remain responsive outside fixed trading sessions.
“Futures were designed to separate price exposure from ownership,” Variola explains. “That’s what allows markets to keep reflecting information even when spot venues are closed.”
This shift has drawn attention away from the instrument itself and toward the systems that support it. Supporting continuous participation depends less on what is traded and more on how trading environments are built.
Convergence is happening at the infrastructure level
While futures enable extended access, infrastructure determines how effectively it works.
“Crypto-native platforms were designed around continuity from day one,” Variola says, built to support always-on markets, global users, and real-time risk.
This design shapes every layer of the system, from matching engines to continuous margin recalculations and round-the-clock risk controls. Traditional market systems, by contrast, are still optimized around open and close cycles, with risk checks and operations tied to fixed trading windows.
“When you apply crypto-native infrastructure to traditional market exposure through futures, it fits naturally,” Variola explains. “You’re using futures, which are suited for extended trading, on systems built for continuous access.”
This is where TradFi and crypto converge at the infrastructure level. The goal is not to replace traditional exchanges, but to extend access around them. As Variola notes, traders don’t want to abandon spot markets; they want ways to stay engaged when those markets are unavailable, with crypto-native platforms and futures acting as a complementary access layer rather than a competitor.
Applying crypto-native systems to traditional markets
The convergence between traditional finance and crypto becomes more tangible when viewed through implementation rather than theory. For Variola, this is where Phemex’s TradFi initiative fits into the broader picture.
“The core problem we wanted to solve was fragmentation between crypto and traditional markets, but also between how traders think and how access is actually structured,” he says.
As he explains it, traders already follow multiple asset classes at the same time. What slows them down isn’t a lack of information or conviction, but the way access is split across platforms, capital pools, and trading schedules.
“Traders already follow multiple asset classes at the same time, yet capital, execution, and risk management are still split across different platforms, accounts, and trading hours,” Variola says.
Phemex addressed this by focusing on exposure rather than ownership. Traditional market access on the platform is offered through futures contracts that track traditional assets such as selected equities and precious metals. There is no spot trading involved, and no requirement to manage custody of the underlying assets.
“We focused on futures because they’re price-based instruments that don’t require ownership or settlement of the underlying asset,” Variola explains. “That makes them structurally compatible with a crypto-native platform.”
All of this runs through the same execution and risk framework traders already use for crypto futures. This means that, rather than introducing separate mechanics for each asset class, Phemex keeps the execution environment familiar.
“That consistency is intentional,” Variola says. “Traders don’t need to learn a new system just to access a different market.”
Unified access also changes how capital is managed. With one margin system and one pool of capital, traders can adjust exposure without moving funds or switching platforms.
All TradFi futures on Phemex run on the same matching, margin, and risk infrastructure used for crypto derivatives, allowing traders to manage cross-asset exposure within a single system rather than across fragmented venues.
In that sense, Phemex’s 24/7 TradFi Futures are less about redefining finance and more about aligning market access with modern trading behavior, bringing equities, precious metals, and crypto onto a single, always-on futures infrastructure where capital, margin, and risk are unified, and where exposure can be managed continuously in a world that no longer trades in sessions, but in real time.
Convergence as an infrastructure shift
Looking ahead, Variola sees convergence less as a merger of asset classes and more as an evolution in market infrastructure.
“The convergence between traditional finance and crypto is unlikely to happen at the product level first,” he says. “It is happening at the infrastructure level, where access, margin, and risk management begin to operate in a more unified and continuous way.”
In that context, always-on trading environments do not replace traditional venues, but extend how traders interact with them. As global information cycles accelerate and trading becomes increasingly cross-asset, platforms built around continuous participation are likely to play a larger role in how exposure is managed.
“Traders are already global and multi-asset in how they think,” Variola adds. “The systems around them are now gradually adapting to match that reality.”
Variola noted that Phemex’s TradFi futures surpassed 100,000,000 USDT in trading volume shortly after launch, reflecting early trader interest as liquidity continues to build and further listings are expected.
To support the early adoption of TradFi futures trading, Phemex is introducing a 0-Fee TradFi Futures Carnival, offering three months of zero trading fees, alongside a $100,000 incentive pool aimed at structured and risk-aware participation, and a first-trade protection mechanism that reimburses eligible users with trading bonus if their initial TradFi futures trade results in a loss.
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