The tokenised asset market is growing, but investor demand and liquidity are still not keeping up. Cointelegraph reported on Oct. 16 that tokenisation, stablecoin payments, on-chain trading infrastructure and venture investment exits were presented as key tasks at the Connect event in Singapore.

An imbalance between supply and demand was cited as a key issue in the real-world asset (RWA) tokenisation market. Alex Taaffe, chief revenue officer at GSR, said access to pre-IPO shares, commodities and global equities trading is improving. He added that investor demand is not keeping pace with the rise in issuance of fully tokenised RWAs. Another point raised was that liquidity fragmentation is worsening as asset issuers and blockchains increase. Lingling Jiang, a partner at DWF Labs, pointed to the challenge of the same underlying asset being split into different liquidity pools depending on the issuer.

In stablecoins, connectivity for everyday payments emerged as a more important task than cross-border remittances. Mike Silagadze, founder and CEO of EtherFi, said stablecoins have made it easier to move money, but their spread depends on whether consumers can actually use them to pay living expenses and bills. He cited Singapore, saying that even if someone holds USDC, they still need local currency to pay bills.

User experience and regulatory response were also presented as key conditions. Yvonne Chia, head of communications at USDD, said it should feel so natural that users are not even aware they are using stablecoins. Ashna Vaghela, chief customer officer at Mercuryo, said payments should be completed without leaving the app, like Apple Pay. Ilya Podoinitsyn, co-founder and CEO of Finhaven, explained that infrastructure and compliance systems need to be adjusted to meet different rules in each country. Stablecoin market capitalisation stood at $306 billion, up about 2 percent from a year earlier and about 74 percent over the most recent 12 months.

In on-chain trading infrastructure, tracking liquidity by blockchain and managing counterparty risk were cited as challenges. Austin Federa, co-founder of DoubleZero, said shifting liquidity between blockchains is more difficult than in traditional financial markets, and liquidity fragmentation is not only an execution issue but also a data problem. Miguel Morel, founder and CEO of Arkham Intelligence, explained that on-chain data can be used to identify counterparty risk and the sources of deposit inflows, helping with price quotes and compliance decisions.

Difficulties in the venture investment exit market also continued. Pulkit Gupta of Nomad Capital said liquidity in the cryptocurrency market has been particularly weak over the past three months, and even that was concentrated in major cryptocurrencies. Sonia Shaw, CEO of OneAsset, said as the market matures it has shifted to a stage where startups need to prove stronger business foundations. Aleksandr Nechayev, a partner at Funders VC, pointed to the expertise of founding teams and their ability to respond as key to investment decisions amid rapid market change.