Tokenized assets are rapidly opening new trading opportunities across traditional and digital financial markets, yet the growing supply of real-world assets (RWAs) being brought onchain has yet to be matched by commensurate investor demand. This mismatch, alongside persistent market fragmentation, remains one of the defining structural hurdles for the industry as it scales into mainstream adoption.
Speaking during a panel on liquidity and market fragmentation at CONNECT by Cointelegraph: Singapore Edition on Oct. 9, Alex Taaffe, chief revenue officer at crypto trading firm GSR, detailed the state of the market. Taaffe noted that liquidity is noticeably improving in trading categories such as pre-IPO stocks, commodities, and global equities—areas where everyday investors previously faced severe access limitations. However, he emphasized that demand for fully tokenized RWAs has failed to keep pace with the sheer volume of assets being issued by eager market participants.
The event, which brought together prominent Web3 founders, investors, and industry executives, featured four distinct panel discussions exploring everything from tokenization and stablecoin payments to onchain trading infrastructure and venture capital exits. A high-stakes startup pitch competition accompanied the conference sessions, highlighting the intense focus currently placed on early-stage innovation and execution within the digital asset ecosystem.
Focusing specifically on the institutional push toward tokenization, Taaffe pointed out a glaring systemic friction. There is a pronounced supply and demand imbalance within fully tokenized assets, driven by a massive influx of supply. Every asset manager and issuer currently seems eager to conduct capital formation directly onchain, creating a scenario where issuance outstrips the capital ready to absorb it. Furthermore, Taaffe explained that the proliferation of diverse asset issuers and an expanding multi-chain universe have only exacerbated the problem, further fragmenting liquidity across isolated tokenized markets.
Lingling Jiang, a partner at DWF Labs, echoed these concerns during the discussions, agreeing that fragmentation continues to pose a formidable challenge. She pointed out that this friction is particularly acute when multiple independent issuers tokenize the exact same underlying asset, inadvertently creating separate, competing liquidity pools instead of a unified, deep market. Despite these structural inefficiencies, Jiang acknowledged that cryptocurrency liquidity has improved significantly over recent years, even as the industry recognizes that substantial work remains to achieve true maturity.
Stablecoin Adoption Hinges on Everyday Payments
The conversation surrounding the friction in digital finance extended far beyond tokenized assets, taking center stage during the panel titled “Stablecoins at the Point of Sale: Cards, Wallets and the Race for Everyday Spend.” Industry leaders analyzed why, despite astronomical growth in total market capitalization, stablecoins still struggle to find a permanent home in the pockets of everyday consumers.
Mike Silagadze, founder and CEO of ether.fi, argued that while stablecoins have undeniably revolutionized the speed and efficiency of moving money across international borders, their broader, long-term adoption ultimately depends on a much more fundamental capability: whether average consumers can seamlessly use them to pay for everyday consumer expenses.
Illustrating this gap, Silagadze pointed to developed financial hubs like Singapore, where tech-savvy consumers might hold digital dollars like USDC in their wallets, yet are still forced to rely strictly on local fiat currency to pay routine bills and retail purchases. This disconnect clearly illustrates the ongoing gap separating advanced blockchain payment infrastructure from the realities of everyday financial services.
Yvonne Chia, head of communications at USDD, approached the challenge from a product design perspective, emphasizing that stablecoin issuers must prioritize the end user’s direct experience above all else. Chia noted that the overarching direction the industry needs to move toward involves making stablecoins so frictionless, intuitive, and universally accepted that users can store, manage, and spend them without ever needing to actively think about the underlying technology. The ultimate goal is for stablecoins to simply blend into the background as a normal, regular part of modern daily life.
Echoing the sentiment that current user experiences remain too cumbersome, Silagadze reiterated that the primary reason people across many parts of the world still do not use stablecoins for routine transactions is simply because the technology fails to plug smoothly into their day-to-day routines.
Beyond pure usability and consumer-facing design, regulatory hurdles continue to cast a long shadow over global rollout strategies. Ilya Podoynitsyn, co-founder and CEO of FinHarbor, highlighted that payment and infrastructure providers must constantly navigate a complex web of rules that vary wildly across different jurisdictions. This fractured regulatory landscape forces companies to continuously adapt their foundational infrastructure and compliance frameworks to fit individual, localized markets rather than enjoying a unified global standard.
Adding to the perspective on merchant integration, Ashna Vaghela, chief customer officer at crypto payments provider Mercuryo, argued that stablecoin payment flows need to become as straightforward and effortless as established mechanisms like Apple Pay, enabling users to complete complex cross-border or local transactions instantaneously without ever leaving a preferred application. The entire point, Vaghela stressed, is for the underlying technology to become completely invisible to the end user.
These discussions unfolded against a backdrop of massive macro growth, with the global stablecoin market capitalization hovering around $306 billion. While this represented a modest 2% increase year-over-year, it followed a staggering 74% expansion during the preceding 12-month cycle, proving that while the asset class has captured massive capital inflows, the battleground has shifted from mere accumulation to practical, real-world utility.
Onchain Trading Faces Liquidity Fragmentation and Risk Management Challenges
As digital asset markets continue to evolve, crypto trading platforms are grappling with complex operational hurdles, particularly when it comes to accurately identifying available liquidity pools scattered across disparate blockchain networks and adequately managing sophisticated counterparty risks. These themes dominated the panel titled “What’s Still Missing in the Onchain Trading Stack in 2026.”
Austin Federa, co-founder of DoubleZero, explained that moving liquidity freely between separate blockchain ecosystems remains significantly more difficult than transferring capital across traditional financial markets. Describing the depth of the issue, Federa noted that market fragmentation is not merely an execution problem; it is fundamentally a data problem. He added that it is currently very difficult to determine with absolute certainty how much liquidity truly exists onchain at any given moment.
On the risk management front, Miguel Morel, founder and CEO of blockchain analytics firm Arkham Intelligence, pointed out that trading firms can leverage transparent onchain data to accurately assess counterparty risks. This capability is especially critical in emerging sectors like prediction markets, where certain active participants may possess a distinct informational advantage over others.
According to Morel, knowing precisely who is on the other side of a trade allows a market participant to take on less risk, which in turn enables them to offer a tighter spread. Ultimately, this transparency translates into better, more competitive pricing for everyday customers. Furthermore, Morel explained that this same granular blockchain data can assist centralized and decentralized exchanges alike in evaluating incoming customer deposits. By analyzing where funds originated, platforms can instantly inform internal compliance decisions without introducing unnecessary friction.
Morel noted that without even needing to request sensitive personal documents like a passport, a platform can understand where incoming deposits are originating from and use that intelligence to determine whether to instantly permit trading activity or route the transaction for a deeper compliance review.
Crypto Investors Face Tougher Exits as Markets Mature
The persistent liquidity challenges circulating throughout the wider digital asset economy have also significantly complicated exit strategies for crypto venture capital investors, a reality dissected during the panel session titled “The Exit Problem: How Investors Get Their Money Back.”
Pulkit Gupta of Nomad Capital shared that liquidity conditions within cryptocurrency markets have been particularly subdued over recent months, with the vast majority of available market liquidity concentrated almost exclusively within the largest, most established cryptocurrencies. For alternative tokens, Gupta admitted that securing a clean, profitable exit has proven to be an exceptionally difficult endeavor. Despite these headwinds, Nomad Capital has maintained backing for several high-profile crypto projects featuring publicly traded tokens, including Movement, Solayer, and Berachain.
Reflecting a broader philosophical shift toward longer-term industry expectations, Sonia Shaw, CEO of OneAsset, emphasized that the cryptocurrency market has fundamentally matured. This evolution now requires early-stage startups to demonstrate robust, verifiable business fundamentals rather than relying solely on narrative momentum. Recalling an era when some investors routinely expected rapid liquidity exits within a mere six-month window, Shaw asserted her belief that the market is no longer operating under those speculative conditions. She characterized this decisive move away from quick, unrealistic exits as a decidedly positive indicator of long-term market health and maturity.
Aleksandr Nechaev, partner at Funders VC, turned the focus toward the sheer velocity of change characterizing modern product development and market cycles. He noted that the rapid pace of technological transformation makes the foundational expertise and resilience of founding teams more central to institutional investment decisions than ever before. The realities of navigating market uncertainty and continuous industry transformation were subsequently put on display later in the day during the event’s startup pitch competition, which was powered by Funders VC to showcase the next generation of builders tackling the ecosystem’s most persistent structural challenges.
Crypto Startups & Venture Capital
Crypto Startups & Venture Capital
Crypto Startups & Venture Capital
