I'm LongbridgeAI, I can summarize articles.TOKEN2049 Singapore 2026, held at Marina Bay Sands with 25,000 attendees, marked a shift toward operational crypto integration. Day one focused on AI agents, privacy, and prediction markets, featuring insights from Balaji Srinivasan and Arthur Hayes. Day two highlighted traditional finance's entry, with major institutions like BlackRock and Nasdaq discussing tokenization and 24-hour trading. Key announcements included Coinbase completing its Deribit integration to form the Coinbase Global Exchange and TOKEN2049 announcing a US debut in 2027.
By Zoey Aemika Ng, Coinlive | Singapore, 8 October 2026
SINGAPORE – TOKEN2049 Singapore returned to Marina Bay Sands on 7–8 October, filling all five floors of the venue with an estimated 25,000 attendees from more than 160 countries, six parallel stages and roughly 500 exhibitors. Organisers said the event had sold out ahead of opening, with over 1,000 side events running across the wider TOKEN2049 Week.
Coinlive attended as media. If the 2025 edition was about the rise of stablecoins and treasury strategies, this year's conversation was noticeably more operational. Across both days, the talk was less about whether traditional finance would enter crypto and more about the plumbing required to make it work: tokenised assets, round-the-clock markets, stablecoin payments and AI agents that move money.
Day One: AI Agents, Privacy and Prediction Markets
The opening day belonged to crypto-native builders. Balaji Srinivasan opened the main stage with a keynote on the open source network state, and Polymarket founder Shayne Coplan used his fireside to reveal that Intercontinental Exchange, parent of the New York Stock Exchange, is one of the prediction market's largest shareholders and is exploring onchain equities in dialogue with regulators.
Arthur Hayes of Maelstrom delivered a keynote titled "FLOP Bigger Than Bitcoin", arguing that AI agents will soon number in the millions or billions yet have no native currency, and introducing his new project, FLOP, as an answer. Not everyone on stage agreed that agents are crypto's next big user. Dragonfly's Haseeb Qureshi opened his talk by admitting he was wrong a year ago: agents largely adopted cards rather than crypto payments. His revised thesis is that humans, not agents, are the ones who need crypto, and that agents may become a safety layer that catches phishing and wrong-address mistakes before funds move.
Privacy also had a prominent moment. On a Zcash-themed main stage session, Tyler Winklevoss framed privacy as a human right, while his brother Cameron drew a line between bitcoin as decentralised and public, and Zcash as decentralised and private.
In the afternoon, Eric Trump and World Liberty Financial CEO Zach Witkoff took the stage for "The Future of Finance, Built in America". Trump said the family hospitality business, which employs tens of thousands of people, is looking at paying salaries in stablecoins, and pointed out that conventional paychecks can take 24 to 36 hours to clear. He also said World Liberty plans to tokenise real estate developments with its USD1 stablecoin as the settlement layer.
Elsewhere, Bitmine chairman Tom Lee said the firm will not accumulate ETH beyond 5% of supply, while Aave's Stani Kulechov argued on an institutional DeFi panel that DeFi's lasting advantage is a lower cost structure than traditional finance can match. Hyperliquid Labs CEO Jeff Yan also took the main stage to discuss rebuilding finance from first principles. TOKEN2049's organisers used the first day to announce their US debut: a New York edition in 2027.
Day Two: The Institutions Arrive
If day one asked what crypto will build, day two asked how traditional finance will plug in. BlackRock, Fidelity, Franklin Templeton, Morgan Stanley, Nasdaq, ICE and PayPal were all represented in sessions on tokenisation, stablecoins and real-world assets.
Adena Friedman, Nasdaq's chair and CEO, told the main stage that markets are moving toward 24-hour trading, which forces risk management, collateral and the movement of capital to happen in real time. Speaking to CNBC at the event, she said tokenising collateral assets and money could free tens of billions of dollars currently tied up across the financial system.
Jenny Johnson, CEO of Franklin Templeton, joined Binance co-CEO Richard Teng and Canton Network CEO Yuval Rooz on a tokenised markets panel. She said legislation would add certainty but the industry should not wait for the CLARITY Act, since the SEC and CFTC are already providing clarity under existing authority, and criticised rival tokenised funds as mere "digital twins" of traditional products rather than using blockchain as the primary record of ownership.
The day's biggest corporate announcement came from Coinbase, which said its integration of derivatives exchange Deribit is complete, creating Coinbase Global Exchange. Eligible US institutions will be able to access Deribit's products through Coinbase Prime, with options access to follow in the coming weeks.
Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson pitched Midnight, the network's privacy-focused partner chain, while TRON's Justin Sun predicted that crypto and AI agents could become a major application layer within five years. A regulation panel with SUI Group's Brian Quintenz, Hyperliquid Policy Center's Jake Chervinsky and Kraken's Arjun Sethi focused on cross-border implementation rather than whether crypto should be regulated at all.
An invitation-only TOKEN2049 Institutional track, held for the first time, gathered senior finance and digital asset leaders behind closed doors.
Beyond the Stages
The show floor and surrounding venues ran at full tilt. Formula 1 stars drew crowds, with Lando Norris appearing with OKX on day one and Max Verstappen and Jenson Button featuring on day two, coinciding with Singapore Grand Prix week. The NEXUS startup competition and the Origins hackathon presented their finalists, and the week closes with the official AFTER 2049 party on the Marina Bay Sands SkyPark on 9 October.
Why It Matters
The mood in Singapore reflected an industry still absorbing setbacks, including the recent exchange hacks that dominated hallway conversations and the stalled progress of US market structure legislation, while institutional participation and stablecoin use continue to grow. Tokenised real-world assets have passed US$38 billion, according to RWA.xyz, a small number next to traditional markets but a clear direction of travel. As one theme ran through both days: markets that never close demand infrastructure that never pauses.
Organisers confirmed the 2027 calendar: Dubai on 21–22 April, New York on 16–17 June, and Singapore on 6–7 October.
Coinlive was an attending media partner at TOKEN2049 Singapore 2026. Statements attributed to speakers were made on stage or in public remarks at the event. This article is for informational purposes only and is not financial advice.