Tokenized assets are rapidly opening up exciting new trading opportunities across traditional financial markets and decentralized ecosystems alike, but the surging supply of real-world assets (RWAs) being brought onchain has yet to be matched by commensurate investor demand. This critical mismatch was a central talking point among industry leaders at the recent CONNECT by Cointelegraph: Singapore Edition, held on Oct. 9, where top executives gathered to dissect the evolving landscape of digital finance.
Speaking during a dedicated panel discussion on liquidity and market fragmentation, Alex Taaffe, chief revenue officer at prominent crypto trading firm GSR, noted that while liquidity is visibly improving for pre-IPO stocks, commodities, and global equities—asset classes that historically offered limited access to retail and crypto-native investors—the broader market for fully tokenized real-world assets is experiencing growing pains.
The event itself brought together a diverse cohort of Web3 founders, institutional investors, and senior industry executives for four intensive panel discussions. These sessions tackled pressing topics ranging from tokenization and stablecoin payments to onchain trading infrastructure and venture capital exit strategies, alongside a high-stakes startup pitch competition.
Addressing the state of tokenization, Taaffe pointed out that the core issue lies in market dynamics. Specifically concerning RWAs and fully tokenized assets, he highlighted a stark supply and demand imbalance. According to Taaffe, an enormous volume of supply is entering the market because nearly every asset manager and issuer is eager to conduct capital formation directly onchain.
However, this rush to tokenize has introduced secondary complications. Taaffe explained that the proliferation of numerous asset issuers alongside an expanding array of distinct blockchains has further fragmented liquidity across tokenized markets, making efficient trading more difficult to achieve.
Lingling Jiang, a partner at DWF Labs who shared the stage during the panel, echoed these sentiments, agreeing that market fragmentation remains a persistent challenge. She emphasized that this friction is particularly acute when different issuers tokenize the same underlying asset but establish separate, isolated liquidity pools rather than unifying them. Despite these structural hurdles, Jiang pointed out that overall cryptocurrency liquidity has improved significantly over recent years, even as the industry acknowledges it still has substantial work to do to achieve seamless market integration.
Stablecoin Adoption Hinges on Everyday Payments
Moving from asset tokenization to currency infrastructure, the event’s panel titled “Stablecoins at the Point of Sale: Cards, Wallets and the Race for Everyday Spend” turned the spotlight on how digital dollars are used in practice. 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, achieving widespread, mass-market adoption ultimately depends on whether everyday consumers can seamlessly use them for routine, day-to-day expenses.
Silagadze drew attention to financial hubs like Singapore, where a tech-savvy consumer might comfortably hold digital assets like USDC but still find themselves forced to rely on traditional local currency to pay ordinary bills. This disconnect underscores the ongoing gap between advanced blockchain payment infrastructure and the realities of everyday consumer financial services.
Weighing in from the issuer perspective, Yvonne Chia, head of communications at USDD, stressed that companies must prioritize the end-user’s point of view above all else. In her view, user experience is the single most important factor for driving adoption. Chia stated that the industry must move in a direction that makes acquiring, holding, and spending stablecoins so frictionless that users do not even consciously realize they are utilizing blockchain technology, treating it instead as an entirely invisible and regular part of their daily lives.
Silagadze reiterated this sentiment, noting that the primary reason stablecoins remain underutilized for local commerce in many parts of the world is simply that they fail to plug naturally into a person’s routine lifestyle.
Beyond consumer-facing usability hurdles, regulatory complexities continue to loom large over the sector. Ilya Podoynitsyn, co-founder and CEO of FinHarbor, highlighted that payment providers must constantly navigate a patchwork of disparate rules that vary significantly from one jurisdiction to another. This regulatory fragmentation forces firms to continually adapt their underlying infrastructure and compliance systems to satisfy individual regional markets.
Adding to the conversation, Ashna Vaghela, chief customer officer at crypto payments provider Mercuryo, suggested that executing a stablecoin payment should eventually become as straightforward and frictionless as using Apple Pay, allowing users to complete commercial transactions instantly without ever leaving an application. The ultimate objective, Vaghela emphasized, is for the technology to become completely invisible.
These discussions unfolded against a broader macroeconomic backdrop where the total stablecoin market capitalization stood at approximately $306 billion. This figure represented a modest 2% increase year-over-year, following a massive roughly 74% surge during the preceding 12-month cycle.
Onchain Trading Faces Liquidity Fragmentation and Risk Management Challenges
As digital asset markets continue to evolve, crypto trading platforms are grappling with complex hurdles regarding how to accurately identify available liquidity scattered across various blockchain networks while effectively managing counterparty risks. These themes took center stage during the panel titled “What’s Still Missing in the Onchain Trading Stack in 2026.”
Austin Federa, co-founder of DoubleZero, explained that moving liquidity fluidly between disparate blockchain networks remains considerably more difficult than in traditional, legacy financial markets. Describing the scope of the problem, Federa noted that market fragmentation is not merely an execution issue, but fundamentally a data problem, adding that it is remarkably difficult to determine how much liquidity genuinely 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 modern trading firms can leverage granular onchain data to accurately assess counterparty risks. This capability is especially crucial in emerging sectors like prediction markets, where certain participants may possess asymmetric informational advantages over others.
By knowing precisely who is on the other side of a trade and thereby taking on lower risk, market makers can offer tighter spreads, Morel explained, which ultimately translates to better pricing for everyday customers. Furthermore, Morel noted that this exact same blockchain data can assist exchanges in evaluating customer deposits, enabling platforms to assess the provenance of incoming funds and streamline compliance protocols. Without needing to demand traditional identification documents like a passport, platforms can trace where deposits originate and intelligently determine whether to instantly permit trading with those funds or route them for a deeper compliance review.
Crypto Investors Face Tougher Exits as Markets Mature
Shifting the lens from trading infrastructure to venture capital, persistent liquidity challenges have significantly complicated investment exits for crypto-focused venture capitalists, according to panelists participating in “The Exit Problem: How Investors Get Their Money Back.”
Pulkit Gupta of Nomad Capital explained that liquidity across broader crypto markets has been noticeably constrained over recent months, with the vast majority of available capital remaining heavily concentrated within the largest, most established cryptocurrencies. For smaller altcoins, Gupta admitted that securing timely and profitable exits has proven to be an exceptionally difficult endeavor, despite his firm having backed several prominent crypto projects with publicly traded tokens, including Movement, Solayer, and Berachain.
Reflecting a broader maturation across the entire asset class, Sonia Shaw, CEO of OneAsset, emphasized that the digital asset market has grown up, forcing modern startups to demonstrate robust and sustainable business fundamentals rather than relying solely on speculative hype. Recalling an era when some investors casually anticipated a complete liquidity exit within a mere six months, Shaw asserted that the market simply operates differently today. She characterized this painful but necessary pivot away from rapid, speculative exits as a remarkably positive sign of long-term market maturity.
Meanwhile, Aleksandr Nechaev, partner at Funders VC, underscored the unique pressures introduced by the breakneck speed of change impacting both underlying products and broader market cycles. Nechaev observed that the sheer velocity of transformation places a founder’s personal expertise, adaptability, and leadership directly at the center of critical investment decisions. The realities of navigating this persistent uncertainty and how founding teams manage market shifts were explored further later in the day during the event’s dedicated startup pitch competition, which was powered by Funders VC.
Crypto Startups & Venture Capital
Crypto Startups & Venture Capital
Crypto Startups & Venture Capital
