In early 2021, an army of retail traders made massive bets on meme stocks and briefly melted down the market. Trading volume swelled to such a huge extent that popular brokerage Robinhood had to halt buy orders for stocks like GameStop for a few days in order to escape a liquidity crisis. At the time, the situation led to claims of a conspiracy, but the reason for the meltdown was more mundane: Wall Street’s creaky infrastructure could not settle trades fast enough.

Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev and others called for an overhaul, and since then there has already been progress, as stock trades now settle a day sooner than in 2021. But the financial industry is also pushing ahead with a more radical solution: turning stocks into digital assets that can be traded and settled instantly on a blockc

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