Tokenization is swimming in supply, still hunting for demand 📉

Liquidity remains the principal bottleneck for tokenized real-world assets despite a surge in the number of issuers bringing products onchain, according to executives speaking at CONNECT by Cointelegraph: Singapore Edition on Oct. 9. Alex Taaffe, chief revenue officer at crypto trading firm GSR, said growing supply has not been matched by investor appetite. "There's a ton of supply. Every asset manager issuer wants to do capital formation onchain," Taaffe said on a panel on liquidity and market fragmentation. He added that liquidity is improving for pre-IPO stocks, commodities and global equities that investors previously had limited access to, but demand for fully tokenized RWAs has lagged issuance.

Lingling Jiang, partner at DWF Labs, agreed that fragmentation remains a problem, particularly when different issuers tokenize the same underlying asset and create separate liquidity pools. Jiang said liquidity in cryptocurrency markets has nonetheless improved significantly in recent years, even as the industry continues to face structural challenges. Securitize's stock jumped more than 10% after launching tokenized US equities on Solana, according to earlier reporting.

Stablecoin adoption, meanwhile, hinges on everyday usability rather than cross-border efficiency, panelists said during the "Stablecoins at the Point of Sale: Cards, Wallets and the Race for Everyday Spend" discussion. Mike Silagadze, founder and CEO of ether.fi, said that while stablecoins have made it easier to move money across borders, wider use depends on whether consumers can spend them on routine expenses. He pointed to Singapore as an example, where consumers may hold USDC but still require local currency to settle them. Yvonne Chia, head of communications at USDD, said user experience is the central factor. "It's the kind of direction that we want to move in, to make it as easy as possible for the user to have stablecoins, use stablecoins, to the point where it doesn't cross their mind that they are using a stablecoin. It's just a regular part of their lives," Chia said.