Public settlement doesn’t just expose data.
It changes how markets behave.
When every trade is visible, participants stop optimizing for efficiency and start optimizing for invisibility. Liquidity fragments. Size disappears. Execution becomes defensive.
RWAs make this worse because the stakes are real.
That’s why settlement design matters more than most people admit. Privacy at settlement isn’t about hiding activity. It’s about letting markets behave normally.
I unpacked this dynamic in today’s post.