Crypto’s Maturing Markets Make Liquidity and Exits the Next Challenge

Tokenized assets are expanding access to pre-IPO stocks, commodities and global equities, but the market’s next challenge is turning growing supply into dependable liquidity. Speakers at Cointelegraph’s Singapore CONNECT event also warned that fragmented trading venues and weaker altcoin liquidity are making exits more difficult for investors.

Tokenized supply outpaces demand

Alex Taaffe, chief revenue officer at crypto trading firm GSR, said asset managers and issuers are increasingly pursuing onchain capital formation. However, demand for fully tokenized real-world assets has not kept pace with the number of products entering the market.

“Every asset manager issuer wants to do capital formation onchain,” Taaffe said during a panel on liquidity and market fragmentation on Oct. 9. He argued that the growing number of issuers and blockchains is splitting liquidity across separate markets rather than concentrating it in deep, efficient pools.

Lingling Jiang, a partner at DWF Labs, said the problem is especially visible when multiple issuers tokenize the same underlying asset but establish separate liquidity pools. While cryptocurrency liquidity has improved over the years, investors still face friction when trying to find the best venue or move capital between markets.

The event also highlighted the continued scale of stablecoins. Stablecoin market capitalization stood at approximately $306 billion, up about 2% year over year after expanding roughly 74% during the previous 12 months.

Fragmentation raises execution and risk concerns

Panelists discussing the onchain trading stack said liquidity fragmentation is not only an execution problem but also a data problem. Austin Federa, co-founder of DoubleZero, said it remains difficult to determine how much liquidity truly exists across blockchain networks and how readily that liquidity can be accessed.

• Liquidity is distributed across issuers, chains and trading venues.
• Identical or similar tokenized assets can have separate pools.
• Traders face added difficulty assessing execution quality and counterparty exposure.

Miguel Morel, founder and CEO of Arkham Intelligence, said onchain data can help trading firms evaluate counterparties and deposits. Better visibility into fund origins could allow platforms to offer tighter spreads to lower-risk customers while routing suspicious activity for compliance review.

What This Means

For crypto investors, market maturity is changing the definition of a successful exit. Pulkit Gupta of Nomad Capital said liquidity has been particularly weak in recent months and concentrated in larger cryptocurrencies, making exits from altcoin positions difficult. The firm has backed projects with publicly traded tokens, including Movement, Solayer and Berachain.

Other speakers said the shift away from rapid exits is ultimately constructive. Sonia Shaw, CEO of OneAsset, said startups now need stronger business fundamentals rather than assumptions of an exit within six months. For Solana-linked investors and builders, the takeaway is that token issuance alone may not create durable value: deep liquidity, interoperable infrastructure, compliance readiness and sustainable demand will increasingly determine whether onchain markets can scale.