Liquidity and Everyday Payments Top Crypto Investors' Concerns at CONNECT Singapore

Tokenized assets face a supply-demand gap

Alex Taaffe, chief revenue officer at GSR, said there is a growing imbalance between the number of real-world assets being tokenized and the demand from investors. He made the comment during a panel on liquidity and market fragmentation at Cointelegraph's CONNECT event in Singapore on October 9.

Tokenized assets are digital tokens on a blockchain that represent ownership of real-world items like stocks, commodities, or private company shares. While trading has improved for some tokenized products, Taaffe said fully tokenized real-world assets have not seen matching investor interest.

Lingling Jiang, a partner at DWF Labs, agreed that fragmentation is a problem. She noted that different issuers sometimes tokenize the same underlying asset on separate blockchains, which splits liquidity across multiple pools instead of concentrating it.

Both speakers agreed that crypto liquidity has improved overall, but said more work is needed before tokenized markets operate smoothly.

Making stablecoins useful for daily spending

Mike Silagadze, founder and CEO of ether.fi, said stablecoins remain underused for everyday purchases because they do not fit easily into people's daily financial routines. He pointed to Singapore, where consumers may hold USDC but still need local currency to pay ordinary bills.

Yvonne Chia from USDD said the industry should focus on user experience so that using a stablecoin feels invisible, just like swiping a card. Ashna Vaghela of Mercuryo added that stablecoin payments should be as simple as using Apple Pay, with transactions completing inside the apps people already use.

Ilya Podoynitsyn of FinHarbor said regulatory rules vary from country to country, making it harder for providers to build a seamless cross-border payment product. Companies must adapt their systems to fit each local set of requirements.

The stablecoin market cap was reported at $306 billion, up roughly 74 percent over the prior 12 months but only about 2 percent higher year over year at the time of the event.

Onchain trading struggles with fragmented liquidity

Austin Federa, co-founder of DoubleZero, said moving liquidity between different blockchain networks is harder than in traditional finance. He described the issue as a data problem: it is difficult to know exactly how much usable liquidity exists across onchain venues.

Miguel Morel, founder and CEO of Arkham Intelligence, said blockchain data can help trading firms assess counterparty risk, especially in prediction markets where some participants may hold an information advantage. He also said onchain analysis lets exchanges track where customer deposits originate, helping compliance decisions without requiring traditional identity documents.

Venture exits grow harder as the market matures

Pulkit Gupta of Nomad Capital said liquidity for smaller cryptocurrency projects has been especially weak over the past three months. He described exits on altcoins as "really tough," noting that most available liquidity sits in larger tokens.

Sonia Shaw of OneAsset said the market has matured, meaning startups now need stronger business fundamentals and investors should expect longer timelines. She recalled an investor who once expected a six-month exit and said that kind of thinking no longer reflects reality.

Aleksandr Nechaev of Funders VC said the rapid pace of change in the industry makes a founder's ability to navigate uncertainty a central factor in investment decisions.

Why these themes matter together

Across all four panels, a common theme emerged: building tokenized markets and stablecoin infrastructure has moved faster than the liquidity and everyday usage required to sustain them. Investors, traders, and issuers all said the next bottleneck is not launching new products but finding enough active buyers, smoother cross-chain liquidity, and practical payment integrations.

Sources

• Cointelegraph