tZERO exchange only available during market hours (for now)

Overstock’s freshly-launched security token exchange tZERO is supposed to operate 24/7, but it is going to stick to normal market hours for the time being, CoinDesk reports.

The temporary operating timeframe—between 9:30 am and 4 pm EST— coincides with the working hours of tZero's broker-dealer, Dinosaur.

“Our approach has been incremental: getting some benefits of blockchain [like endless operating hours] but not going full-blown, and this is also something that made the regulators comfortable with letting us move forward,” CEO Saum Noursalehi said. “Initially we did it to kind of mimic the market, but Dino is our broker-dealer at this point and we wanted to make sure there is support available for investors during the broker’s business hours.”

Meanwhile, tZERO is planning to use the time to deal with minor technical issues, with users mainly complaining about account confirmations and slow wire transfers. According to Noursalehi, rules governing AML/KYC checks initially required many applications to be reviewed manually, so the company needed to adjust the process.

tZERO is also planning to become its own retail broker-dealer, and to have retail investors trade at tZERO starting from August.