Tokenized assets are rapidly opening up fresh trading opportunities and transforming traditional financial markets, yet the accelerating supply of real-world assets (RWAs) being brought onchain has not yet been met by a corresponding wave of investor demand. This structural imbalance was a central theme highlighted by Alex Taaffe, chief revenue officer at prominent crypto trading firm GSR, during a high-profile industry gathering in Southeast Asia.
Speaking on a panel dedicated to liquidity and market fragmentation at the CONNECT by Cointelegraph: Singapore Edition event on Oct. 9, Taaffe noted that while liquidity is visibly improving for alternative investments such as pre-IPO stocks, commodities, and global equities that were once largely out of reach for everyday market participants, fully tokenized RWAs are experiencing a distinct lag in market appetite. The event brought together a wide array of Web3 founders, institutional investors, and senior industry executives for a series of intensive discussions covering asset tokenization, stablecoin utility, onchain trading infrastructure, and venture capital exit strategies, alongside an active startup pitch competition.
Elaborating on the current state of asset issuance, Taaffe pointed directly to the market mechanics driving the imbalance. Specifically addressing RWAs and fully tokenized instruments, he emphasized that there is a pronounced supply and demand discrepancy in the current landscape. According to Taaffe, a massive wave of supply is entering the ecosystem as virtually every traditional asset manager and issuer looks toward blockchain technology to execute capital formation directly onchain.
However, the proliferation of new asset issuers working across an expanding array of distinct blockchains has inadvertently aggravated a secondary challenge: the deep fragmentation of liquidity across disparate tokenized markets.
Lingling Jiang, a partner at DWF Labs, echoed these concerns during the discussions, agreeing that market fragmentation remains a persistent operational hurdle. Jiang pointed out that this friction is particularly acute when multiple independent issuers attempt to tokenize the exact same underlying asset, inadvertently splitting potential trading volume into isolated, separate liquidity pools rather than fostering a unified, robust market. Even so, Jiang offered an optimistic macro perspective, emphasizing that overall cryptocurrency liquidity has matured and improved significantly over recent years, even if the sector still faces structural hurdles as it scales.
The ongoing evolution of tokenized equities received further attention during the conference, underscored by concurrent market developments such as Securitize seeing its stock valuation climb by over 10% following the strategic rollout of tokenized United States equities on the Solana blockchain network.
Stablecoin Adoption Hinges on Everyday Payments and Seamless User Experience
Shifting the focus from institutional capital formation to consumer-facing applications, the panel titled “Stablecoins at the Point of Sale: Cards, Wallets and the Race for Everyday Spend” tackled the practical barriers preventing widespread global adoption. Mike Silagadze, the founder and CEO of ether.fi, argued that while stablecoins have undeniably revolutionized the speed and efficiency of moving capital across international borders, achieving truly mass adoption ultimately relies on whether everyday consumers can seamlessly utilize these digital currencies for mundane, daily expenses.
Silagadze drew attention to developed digital hubs like Singapore, where a tech-savvy consumer might comfortably hold digital dollars like USDC in a wallet, yet still find themselves forced to rely on traditional local fiat currency to pay routine utility bills and everyday expenses. This friction, he argued, illustrates the ongoing disconnect between sophisticated blockchain payment back-ends and the practical realities of everyday consumer financial services.
Echoing this sentiment from an issuer’s perspective, Yvonne Chia, head of communications at USDD, stressed that prioritizing the consumer viewpoint is paramount. For any stablecoin project aiming for ubiquity, Chia explained, the absolute most critical metric is user experience. She outlined the ultimate vision for the sector, stating that the long-term goal is to build an environment so intuitive that using stablecoins becomes completely frictionless, to the point where the average person does not even actively think about the underlying technology during a transaction, viewing it simply as a regular, frictionless part of their daily life.
To make this vision a reality, the infrastructure must undergo a fundamental shift. Silagadze bluntly summarized the current barrier to entry, noting that the primary reason stablecoins remain largely unused for day-to-day purchases in many parts of the world is simply that they do not naturally integrate into normal daily routines.
Beyond user experience hurdles, significant regulatory complexities continue to challenge expansion. Ilya Podoynitsyn, co-founder and CEO of FinHarbor, highlighted that digital asset providers are forced to navigate a complex labyrinth of compliance frameworks that vary wildly across different global jurisdictions. These fractured regulatory demands require infrastructure providers to constantly adapt their operational systems and compliance protocols on a market-by-market basis.
Adding to the industry outlook, Ashna Vaghela, chief customer officer at crypto payments provider Mercuryo, asserted that decentralized payment rails should eventually match the frictionless convenience of established consumer technologies like Apple Pay, allowing users to execute transactions instantaneously without ever needing to navigate away from their primary applications. Vaghela concluded that invisibility is the ultimate benchmark of success for payment rails, arguing that the entire point of modern infrastructure is to fade into the background.
These strategic discussions unfolded against a backdrop of significant macro growth for the sector, with total stablecoin market capitalization hovering around $306 billion, reflecting a modest year-over-year increase of roughly 2% following an explosive 74% expansion during the preceding twelve-month cycle.
Onchain Trading Faces Liquidity Fragmentation and Risk Management Challenges
As the conversation turned toward the technical hurdles of decentralized finance, a separate panel titled “What’s Still Missing in the Onchain Trading Stack in 2026” explored the persistent difficulties trading platforms encounter when trying to map available liquidity across a multi-chain ecosystem and manage complex counterparty risks.
Austin Federa, co-founder of DoubleZero, asserted that routing liquidity seamlessly between distinct blockchain networks remains substantially more difficult than executing equivalent trades in legacy financial markets. Describing the core technical bottleneck, Federa noted that fragmentation goes far beyond mere trade execution mechanics, classifying it fundamentally as a data visibility problem. He explained that it remains genuinely difficult for market participants to accurately calculate how much liquidity truly exists across the fragmented onchain landscape.
Addressing the critical pillar of risk management, Miguel Morel, founder and CEO of blockchain analytics firm Arkham Intelligence, pointed out that sophisticated trading firms are increasingly leveraging granular onchain data to accurately assess counterparty exposure. This capability is particularly vital within emerging sectors like prediction markets, where certain participants may hold asymmetric informational advantages over others.
According to Morel, knowing precisely who sits on the other side of a trade allows institutions to take on lower risk, which in turn enables them to offer tighter spreads and more competitive pricing for everyday customers. Furthermore, Morel explained that this same transparent blockchain data empowers exchanges to evaluate incoming customer deposits autonomously, reviewing the origin of funds to streamline regulatory compliance decisions. Without needing to resort to invasive paperwork like collecting passports, platforms can instantly determine where inbound deposits originate and use those insights to decide whether to clear funds for immediate trading or route them for deeper compliance review.
Crypto Investors Face Tougher Exits as Venture Markets Mature
The realities of market maturation were also a central focus during a panel addressing venture capital liquidity, aptly titled “The Exit Problem: How Investors Get Their Money Back.” Panelists unpacked how ongoing liquidity bottlenecks have significantly complicated the exit pathways for early-stage crypto venture capital investors.
Pulkit Gupta of Nomad Capital explained that liquidity conditions across broader crypto markets had proven exceptionally challenging over the preceding three-month window, with available trading volume heavily concentrated primarily in large-cap digital assets rather than early-stage alternatives. Gupta noted that for smaller-cap altcoins, securing clean liquidity exits has proven to be a genuinely difficult hurdle for institutional backers, despite Nomad Capital having previously backed several high-profile crypto infrastructure projects with publicly traded tokens, including Movement, Solayer, and Berachain.
Reflecting on this broader recalibration of market expectations, Sonia Shaw, CEO of OneAsset, argued that the industry has undergone a healthy maturation process, forcing early-stage startups to demonstrate much stronger, fundamentally sound underlying business models rather than relying purely on speculative hype. Contrasting the current environment with past market cycles where investors frequently demanded rapid liquidity turnarounds, Shaw remarked that the era of expecting an exit within six months is largely gone, characterizing this shift away from unrealistic timelines as a positive and necessary sign of a maturing industry.
Aleksandr Nechaev, partner at Funders VC, further emphasized the unique operational challenges introduced by the relentless pace of product and market evolution in the Web3 sector. Nechaev highlighted that the sheer velocity of change places the expertise, adaptability, and resilience of founding teams at the very center of institutional investment decisions. This critical interplay between rapid technological shifts and the ability of founding teams to navigate extreme uncertainty emerged as a defining theme later in the day during the event’s startup pitch competition, which was powered by Funders VC.
Crypto Startups & Venture Capital
Crypto Startups & Venture Capital
Crypto Startups & Venture Capital
