Recently, I came across a quite interesting story about the journey of egg futures—from one of the world's most active trading products to its current state. In the early 20th century, Chicago was the center of egg trading, with volume only behind grain commodities. In fact, CME ( was called the Chicago Butter and Egg Board) back then, initially only trading two items: butter and eggs.

But after the 1970s, as the poultry industry in the U.S. became industrialized, the cold chain was perfected, and price volatility began to "flatten out," the noise in the trading pits subsided. In 1982, egg futures officially withdrew from CME. Not with a dramatic collapse, but like a gentle turn-off of the lights, signaling the end of an era.

Interestingly, in 2013, Dalian reintroduced this product because the egg farming industry there remained highly dispersed, with volatile prices. And now, egg futures are moving again. This time, it appears on Polymarket.

I saw a trader with ID xcnstrategy placing positions predicting egg prices for different months, with a total of $44,800 USD wagered, nearly $100,000 in profit. The most recent trade was also the best: investing $12,393 that the price of a dozen eggs in May would not exceed $4.50, yielding a profit of $41,289 (+333%).

Who could this person be? Some suggest they have a background in commodity markets or specialize in agricultural data, analyzing that the price increase caused by avian flu is a short-term phenomenon. Or perhaps they work within the egg supply chain itself, hedging risks.

But the interesting point doesn’t stop there. Eggs are just a small example. Polymarket and Hyperliquid are becoming venues for trading traditional assets: crude oil, gold, silver, exchange rates, even housing data. And their biggest advantage is 24/7 nonstop trading.

I notice that when traditional markets close, crypto platforms become the only places still lit up. The US-Iran conflict last weekend is the clearest proof. According to Bloomberg, when the conflict erupted, many traders flocked to Hyperliquid to trade swaps linked to crude oil and gold. At that moment, traditional markets closed, but crypto derivatives kept operating.

In fact, this was anticipated. Investment director Avi Felman once said that Hyperliquid would become indispensable for hedge funds thanks to 24/7 trading. And this prediction was validated during this conflict.

Another parallel trend is gold tokenization. When gold exists as tokens on the chain and is continuously valued, it no longer needs to wait for London or CME to open. The tokenized gold market acts as a "pre-market session" for traditional markets, enabling price discovery to happen earlier.

Actually, FTX experimented with this as early as 2020 with tokenized Tesla and NVIDIA stocks. The idea was that even when the U.S. stock market closed, users could still trade. But due to liquidity issues, effective valuation couldn’t be achieved. Six years later, tokenization has returned with a similar vision, now with much better liquidity.

Looking back through history, over a hundred years ago, butter and egg traders in Chicago founded CME because they needed a place to discover prices and transfer risk. Now, the same logic is reemerging on-chain, just with different means. You might think the market is trading egg futures or other assets, but in reality, the market is competing for the right to set prices.