The plumbing behind on-chain finance is getting an upgrade. Temporal is a crypto-native engineering firm building the institutional infrastructure that lets global markets settle on Solana — 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Joining me at the New York Stock Exchange is Michael Marcantonio, CEO of Temporal. Michael, congratulations on the new role. In plain terms, what does Temporal do and why should an everyday investor care?
Thank you. At the simplest level, Temporal builds the infrastructure that lets institutional participants trade on-chain the way they currently trade off-chain. That means order management systems, risk engines, market connectivity — the pipes. Why should an everyday investor care? Because the pipes determine what you can access, how fast, and at what cost. If we get this right, the infrastructure we build today is what makes tokenised equities, tokenised treasuries, and tokenised real world assets actually tradeable for institutions — and eventually for everyone else.
Why leave Galaxy for Temporal now, and what will bringing global markets on-chain look like a year from now?
At Galaxy I was Head of DeFi — I spent a lot of time understanding where the real bottlenecks were for institutional adoption of on-chain markets. The answer kept coming back to infrastructure. Not the assets, not the regulations — the plumbing. Temporal was building exactly that. A year from now I expect we will have meaningful institutional volume running through on-chain venues that did not exist two years ago — equities, futures, and some early prediction market products.
You plan to expand into futures, options, and prediction markets. Why those products?
Futures and options are how institutions hedge. If you tokenise an equity but there is no derivatives market around it, institutions cannot manage their risk — so they will not participate. Prediction markets are different. They are an emerging asset class that is genuinely native to blockchain. There is no legacy equivalent. We think there is a real institutional use case there that is still largely untapped.
The UAE is pushing hard into tokenisation. Is the Gulf part of Temporal’s plans?
Absolutely. The Gulf is one of the most active regions globally for tokenisation right now. The regulatory frameworks in ADGM and DIFC are sophisticated and the appetite from sovereign and family office capital is real. What it would take for us to set up there is what we are actively exploring — the regulatory path, the partnerships, the local market structure questions.
What are UAE regulators getting right and what still needs work?
They are moving fast, which is rare for regulators. They are engaging directly with builders and asking the right questions about market structure — not just KYC and AML, but settlement finality, custody, risk. What still needs work is harmonisation — Dubai, Abu Dhabi, and the DIFC each have their own rules and the fragmentation creates friction for firms trying to operate regionally. A more unified framework would accelerate adoption significantly.
Which assets go on-chain at scale first in the Gulf?
Gold is the most natural fit — there are already active pilots and the asset is well understood. Real estate tokenisation is generating enormous interest. Funds — particularly money market funds — are also a near-term candidate because the yield and liquidity dynamics make sense on-chain. Equities are further out because the market structure complexity is higher.
What would it take for Gulf sovereign wealth funds and family offices to trade or settle on-chain?
The same things it takes anywhere — custody that meets their existing standards, risk infrastructure that integrates with how they already manage portfolios, and regulatory clarity that gives their compliance teams comfort. The appetite is there. The infrastructure question is what Temporal is working to answer.
Around-the-clock trading and instant settlement have clear benefits. What are the risks?
The biggest risk is operational — systems that were designed for market hours are not designed for 24/7. Margin calls happen at 3 a.m. Risk models need to be always on. The second risk is liquidity — just because a market is open does not mean it is liquid. Building the market maker infrastructure that keeps spreads tight across the clock is non-trivial. We think about both of those problems a lot.
Michael, thank you so much for joining us today.
