TOKEN2049 Singapore wrapped its main program on Thursday, October 8, with roughly 25,000 attendees across five floors and six public stages, but its second day carried a different tone from the opening. While Day 1 focused on crypto-native projects, Ethereum treasury strategies and the industry’s next wave of products, Day 2 put traditional financial institutions alongside crypto companies to discuss tokenization, stablecoins, real-world assets (RWAs) and on-chain market infrastructure.
The program also featured Coinbase’s launch of its Global Exchange, Charles Hoskinson’s pitch for Cardano’s privacy-focused Midnight network, a new invitation-only institutional track, and the confirmation of TOKEN2049’s three-city 2027 calendar.
TOKEN2049 Sets 2027 Calendar
Organizers used the Singapore event to confirm the conference’s 2027 schedule, with events planned for Dubai on April 21–22, New York on June 16–17, and Singapore on October 6–7.
The New York event, which will mark TOKEN2049’s first edition in the US, was announced during Day 1. Organizers are targeting 15,000 attendees for the New York edition, with super-early-bird tickets priced at $599.
The three-city schedule gives TOKEN2049 a presence across the Middle East, US, and Asia, extending the conference beyond its established Singapore and Dubai events.
Coinbase Unveils Global Exchange
Coinbase delivered the day’s biggest corporate announcement, saying its integration of derivatives exchange Deribit is complete, creating what it calls Coinbase Global Exchange. The roughly $2.9 billion Deribit acquisition closed in August 2025. Coinbase said the completed integration will connect its US and international businesses to Deribit’s options and perpetual futures liquidity.
Eligible US institutions will be able to access Deribit’s products through Coinbase Prime, with options access expected to follow in the coming weeks. Coinbase also said Coinbase Pro is scheduled to return by the end of the year. The company pointed to guidance from the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) in May as part of the regulatory basis for connecting US clients with global derivatives liquidity.
As The Crypto Times previously reported, the integration connects US traders to the roughly $30 billion Bitcoin options market, giving institutional users access to a broader pool of crypto derivatives liquidity. For Coinbase, the move is also a commercial expansion of its derivatives business, meaning the company’s description of a unified global market should be viewed alongside its role as the platform operator.
Wall Street Takes the Tokenization Stage
Tokenization was one of the dominant themes across Day 2, with executives from some of the world’s largest financial institutions discussing how traditional assets could move onto blockchain-based infrastructure.
The “Tokenization: The Next Investment Revolution” panel featured Fidelity’s Cynthia Lo Bessette, Bitwise’s Hunter Horsley, BlackRock’s Nikhil Sharma, Morgan Stanley’s Amy Oldenburg, and ICE’s Michael Blaugrund. Sharma discussed the convergence of AI and tokenization, framing AI as a source of context for financial decisions while tokenized assets could provide the execution layer for those decisions.
The day began with another institutional lineup. Franklin Templeton CEO Jenny Johnson, Binance co-CEO Richard Teng, and Canton CEO Yuval Rooz discussed “The New Institutional Market: Tokenized Assets, Global Liquidity, Onchain Settlement.”
The interest in tokenization comes against a market that is still relatively small compared with traditional financial markets. As The Crypto Times reported earlier this week, Ethereum accounted for about 53% of a roughly $349 billion on-chain tokenized-asset and stablecoin market.
That makes the direction of travel clearer than the scale of adoption. The institutions appearing on stage were describing potential market infrastructure and ongoing initiatives, rather than announcing a completed migration of traditional markets onto public blockchains.
Stablecoins received their own marquee discussion in “Stablecoins: The Payments Industry, Rebuilt,” featuring PayPal’s May Zabaneh, Fireblocks’ Stephen Richardson, MoonPay’s Ivan Soto-Wright and Rain’s Farooq Malik.
RWAs were another recurring theme, including the session “The Next 100 Million RWA Holders Are Already Onchain,” featuring Ethereum co-founder Joseph Lubin and Robinhood Crypto’s Johann Kerbrat.
Nasdaq chair and CEO Adena Friedman also appeared in a CNBC-moderated fireside discussion on the future of 24/7 markets and global trading.
Hoskinson Pitches Midnight Privacy Network
Charles Hoskinson brought a more crypto-native focus to Day 2 with a keynote on Midnight, Cardano’s privacy-focused partner chain. During the “Midnight City” session, Hoskinson discussed Midnight’s privacy architecture and its Night Mode, alongside products including Midnight Passport, a Collateral Warehouse and Offer Files.
The project combines technologies including zero-knowledge proofs, multi-party computation and trusted execution environments. Hoskinson said he has invested roughly $200 million in Midnight’s development.
Midnight’s genesis block was launched in March 2026, and the network has also moved to support Solana wallets.
Hoskinson also used the event to criticize the Cardano community-funded booth for featuring the SNEK memecoin rather than Midnight. He described Midnight as the “Where’s Waldo” of Cardano and linked the decision to broader tensions with the Cardano Foundation. That criticism represents Hoskinson’s position in an ongoing ecosystem dispute, rather than an independently established finding. The project has also faced questions around its token’s market data.
The Crypto Times previously reported that Hoskinson disputed Midnight’s $1.81 NIGHT price peak displayed on CoinMarketCap.
AI Agents Keep the Day 1 Theme Alive
The AI-and-crypto narrative from Day 1 continued into the second day. TRON founder Justin Sun, speaking in a fireside conversation with Kevin Follonier, argued that the combination of crypto and AI agents could become one of the industry’s major application layers over the next five years.
Sun framed crypto as infrastructure for an AI-driven economy in which autonomous agents could interact with programmable assets, payments and settlement systems. He also connected that thesis to the Justin Sun Award for machine-verifiable mathematical proofs, saying crypto-related proceeds could support scientific research.
Consumer-facing crypto also appeared on the program. In “A New Era for Money,” Samsung Wallet’s Wonseok Baek joined Solana Foundation’s Vibhu Norby. The session came shortly after revived conversations around Samsung’s patent for a keyless smart-contract crypto wallet and amid the company’s broader push into stablecoin-enabled wallet functionality.
Regulation Moves From Debate to Implementation
Regulatory discussions on Day 2 were more focused on implementation than on whether crypto should be regulated at all.
The “Regulation: Finding Clarity Across Borders” panel brought together SUI Group’s Brian Quintenz, Hyperliquid Policy Center’s Jake Chervinsky, VARA’s Deepa Raja Carbon, and Kraken’s Arjun Sethi. The lineup reflected the increasingly operational nature of the industry’s regulatory debate, with companies and policymakers focused on how digital-asset businesses can operate across jurisdictions.
Elsewhere, Dragonfly’s Haseeb Qureshi, Forward Industries’ Kyle Samani and Inversion’s Santiago Roel Santos discussed “Crypto: The End of the Beginning.”
Institutional Track Takes the Conversation Behind Closed Doors
Alongside the public stages, TOKEN2049 introduced an invitation-only Institutional track for roughly 200 attendees, primarily senior executives and managing directors. The program included discussions such as “The New Macro Order,” featuring Zoltan Pozsar and Goldman Sachs’ Timothy Moe; “The Next Wave of Institutional Capital,” with Tom Lee and Franklin Templeton’s Jenny Johnson; and sessions involving Brian Quintenz, BitGo’s Mike Belshe, Morgan Stanley’s Amy Oldenburg, and Binance’s Richard Teng.
Because the track was closed to the public, independently verified quotes and detailed discussion points from the sessions remained limited as the event concluded.
Verstappen, Button, and TOKEN2049’s Closing Act
The conference’s celebrity and culture programming continued alongside its institutional focus. Formula 1 world champion Max Verstappen appeared with Gate for a discussion around race performance and prediction before making a handprint at the Gate booth. Former F1 driver Jenson Button also appeared in the motorsport programming, following Lando Norris’ Day 1 appearance with OKX.
Off the main stages, The Chopping Block went live at BingX Labs with Balaji Srinivasan, Arthur Hayes, Haseeb Qureshi, and Tarun Chitra. A “Roast of Ansem” featuring comedian T.J. Miller also took place, while the NEXUS startup winner and Origins hackathon demonstrations were presented on the MEXC stage.
What Day 2 Says About TOKEN2049
If Day 1 showed what crypto is building, Day 2 showed where traditional finance is trying to plug into it. BlackRock, Fidelity, Franklin Templeton, Morgan Stanley, Nasdaq, PayPal, and ICE all appeared in discussions around tokenization, stablecoins, RWAs, or always-on financial markets.
That does not mean the transition has already happened. The infrastructure remains under development, adoption varies across products and jurisdictions, and many of the ideas discussed on stage remain forward-looking.
But the contrast between the two days was clear. Day 1 centred on crypto-native projects, market structures and ecosystem experiments. Day 2 put institutional adoption and financial-market infrastructure at the centre of the conversation.
TOKEN2049 Week now moves toward AFTER2049 on Friday, October 9, at the Marina Bay Sands SkyPark, while the Singapore Grand Prix runs from October 9–11.
Also Read: TOKEN2049 Day 1: US Expansion, FLOP Project, BitMine’s 5% ETH Cap, Polymarket Token
