IOSG Ventures said this year’s KBW in Seoul and TOKEN2049 in Singapore showed a crypto market that looks quieter in the exhibition hall but remains active where deals are actually being discussed. In its account, the energy has not disappeared. It has moved from the main stage to side events, private rooms and institutional meetings, while the conversation itself has shifted away from the next 100x token and toward AI agents, stablecoins, institutional rails and trading infrastructure.
KBW Seoul: attendance held up, but the crowd changed
IOSG wrote that it spent most of its time at side events rather than inside the main venue. Some attendees described the main conference as cooler than last year, with shorter lines, fewer sponsors and fewer early-stage projects that had not yet launched tokens. What IOSG saw outside the hall was different: interest had not faded much, but it had moved indoors into smaller rooms.
According to the report, attendance at the main venue did not fall and was slightly higher than last year, though it came in below pre-event expectations of more than 14,000. The change, in IOSG’s telling, was not fewer people but a different mix of people. Local media summed it up as “hoodies meeting suits.”
There were fewer side events, but the audience was more concentrated. IOSG grouped roughly 185 side events listed on the official site into several buckets: about 35 focused on ecosystems and public chains, about 27 on DeFi and trading, including Perp-DEX Day, about 22 on gaming, entertainment and NFTs, about 20 on RWA and institutions, about 16 on AI, about 10 on stablecoins and payments, and about 55 on broader social gatherings, parties and closed-door dinners.
Institutions moved from the audience to the center of the stage
IOSG said 115 of KBW’s 290 speakers came from finance, policy and asset-management service providers, close to 40% of the total. Moody’s, S&P Global and Franklin Templeton discussed ratings and data frameworks on stage. Samsung Securities, Korea Investment Securities, Kyobo Life, Hyundai Card and LG CNS appeared as new institutional partners. The result, IOSG wrote, was a main conference that increasingly resembled a financial industry event.
The firm tied that shift to a broader reshuffling of local capital in South Korea. It pointed to the ongoing share-swap merger between Naver Financial and Dunamu, the parent of Upbit; Mirae Asset’s acquisition of Korbit; 20% stakes in Coinone taken by Korea Investment Securities and OKX Ventures; and Hana Bank’s 6.55% holding in Dunamu. Traditional finance, IOSG argued, is not showing up just to attend. It is buying access points.
Seoul side events focused on what teams are building
In Seoul, IOSG said the tone at side events was looser and more practical. The discussion centered on what teams were building rather than what they were selling. Ethereum Korea One set the theme for Builder Day as “Build Beyond the Narrative,” explicitly adding “no hype cycles, no price talk,” and opened with the CFO of DB Securities.
Tiger Research observed that Korean retail liquidity is slowing and that some foundations have cut budgets aimed at retail users in favor of institutional partnerships. IOSG said the same shift was visible on the ground: teams talked more about TAM, compliance and revenue, and less about community airdrops. In its framing, the narrative-driven cycle is receding, and the teams staying in the game are the ones with real revenue.
AI dominated the Seoul conversation, but live usage remains limited
IOSG said AI was the main theme across the Seoul side events it attended. Yellow discussed agentic trading, with the most common questions from the audience focused on trust and where humans remain in the loop. Pharos used its “AI Meets RealFi” event to launch Vault Launchpad, pairing agents with tokenized yield products.
On the main stage, 0G talked about a trust layer for agents. Several speakers cited x402 data saying cumulative transactions could exceed 200 million by mid-2026, with more than 850,000 buyers. IOSG said the broad agreement was straightforward: agents cannot open bank accounts or swipe credit cards, so stablecoins are the most practical settlement method available to them today. The disagreement was just as clear. Real agent transaction volume is still small, and ticket sizes remain low.
Won stablecoins were not a party topic, but they were a meeting-room topic
Stablecoins and payments were not heavily represented in public side-event programming. IOSG counted only about 10 such events on the official list, roughly 5% of the total. Yet in institutional sessions and bank meeting rooms, it described the topic as one of the hottest in Seoul.
On the regulatory side, South Korea’s digital asset framework law is still in final coordination, and the question of who gets to issue a won stablecoin remains unresolved. The biggest dispute, according to IOSG, is whether banks must own 51% of the issuer. Even so, some players have already started moving. NHN KCP demonstrated won stablecoin payment and settlement on the main stage, while the second phase of the Bank of Korea’s Project Hangang now includes nine banks and is positioned as a middle-ground model between a CBDC and a stablecoin.
Distribution is also becoming a battleground. IOSG pointed to Naver × Upbit, Kakao × Kaia, Toss’s offline terminals and bank alliances as examples of groups competing for real-world use cases. It also cited a remark from a South Korean lawmaker in October that 54% of trading in yen stablecoins takes place in South Korea. If that figure is accurate, IOSG said, it would suggest Korean users are already using stablecoins, just not a domestic one yet. Once legislation is finalized, the contest will be over who already controls users and merchants.
South Korea’s tokenization sample: securities and entertainment IP
IOSG said South Korea’s STO law passed in January and will formally take effect on Feb. 4, 2027, with detailed rules to be released gradually this autumn. BCG projects the country’s tokenized securities market will reach about KRW 367 trillion by 2030.
What stood out more to IOSG, though, was entertainment IP. WAVIST Night, hosted by Soneium, DayOneDream and Optimism, put K-Pop and on-chain entertainment in the same room. IOSG argued that South Korea’s global strength in IP exports, combined with participation from Japanese-linked public chains, could make “Japan-Korea IP plus on-chain issuance and fan economies” a distinctive local narrative.
TOKEN2049 Singapore: sold out again, but no longer growing
In Singapore, IOSG said the cooler feel had the same root cause as in Seoul. It was not about fewer people. It was about less spectacle in the exhibition hall and more suits in the room. The report said TOKEN2049 Singapore grew from about 7,500 attendees in 2022 to 25,000 in 2025, then stopped growing this year for the first time, mainly because Marina Bay Sands had reached capacity.
The organizer announced at the event that a New York edition will launch in June 2027 with a target of 15,000 attendees. That means future growth is expected to come from adding cities rather than making Singapore larger.
IOSG also noted that TOKEN2049 again took place during the same week as Formula 1, pushing hotel prices to three to five times normal levels. At those prices, every meeting becomes more transactional. Compared with Seoul, Singapore had less room for open-ended discussion about what teams are building and more pressure to make each meeting count.
Day 2 belonged to Wall Street
IOSG described the clearest change in Singapore as the second day of the conference. TOKEN2049 added an invitation-only closed-door event, TOKEN2049 Institutional, bringing together about 250 executives from traditional finance and digital assets. BlackRock, Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs and Franklin Templeton were on the list, and the agenda covered custody, tokenization, liquidity and trading infrastructure.
On the main stage, Nasdaq CEO Adena Friedman discussed 24/7 trading. Franklin Templeton CEO Jenny Johnson criticized “digital twin” tokenization that simply ports traditional funds on-chain without changing the structure.
Moves around the conference lined up with the same theme. Coinbase said it had completed the Deribit integration. OKX and ICE applied to the SEC to list tokenized trading for 63 U.S. stocks. Looking at Seoul and Singapore side by side, IOSG said traditional finance is buying access in Korea, through exchange equity and licenses, while in Singapore it is choosing rails. Institutions are no longer debating whether to touch crypto. They are debating which chain, which custodian and which settlement layer to use.
Singapore side events: AI stayed on stage, payments moved backstage
AI was also the main draw at Singapore side events, IOSG said, especially where AI intersected with trading and tokens: agents running strategies, research tools connected to execution, and token launches wrapped in AI branding.
The main stage reflected the same pattern. “The Agent Economy: Why AI Needs Crypto” featured NEAR’s Illia Polosukhin, Base’s Jesse Pollak and Gauntlet’s Tarun Chitra. Arthur Hayes introduced the AI agent network FLOP, focused on commercial payments between agents, though IOSG noted that by the time of the conference there was still no white paper or token supply plan. Eric Trump described a future in which agents use crypto wallets to book flights.
IOSG said one point was worth recording clearly: not one speaker claimed that agents are already generating meaningful transaction volume today. The language was consistently about what will happen, not what is already happening. That matched what the firm heard in Seoul. Attention has arrived first. Products are still catching up.
Popular side events still filled up. IOSG cited KAST’s event and several cocktail gatherings as examples. KAST itself builds stablecoin accounts and cards. The report’s takeaway was that payment companies are still hosting events, but they are no longer talking much about payments on stage. The real payment deals are being signed offstage.
Its example was the Oct. 8 partnership between Nium and RedotPay, which used Nium’s network across 190 countries and 100 currencies to expand stablecoin cash-out. There was no launch event, only a press release. IOSG said that is what the payments track looks like this year.
Perpetual DEXs and prediction markets: familiar themes, new product pushes
IOSG said perpetual DEXs and prediction markets remain active but are no longer the fresh narrative of the year. In Singapore, Hyperliquid’s Jeff Yan said options are the next focus and will sit on the same order book, though he gave no timeline. Polymarket hinted at launching on-chain assets without offering details. Kalshi’s John Wang discussed bringing perpetuals into the U.S. Lighter’s Vladimir Novakovski appeared on a panel about on-chain options and derivatives.
The report also highlighted a local regulatory wrinkle. During the same week, the Financial Times reported that Hyperliquid had confirmed Singapore as its registered headquarters, while the Monetary Authority of Singapore said it does not consider the platform to fall within its regulatory perimeter because of its decentralized nature. MAS had already placed it on its investor alert list in June. IOSG said the fact that the largest perpetual DEX is based in Singapore yet sits in a regulatory gray zone shows how far the sector still is from becoming fully licensed.
Regulation: Singapore is writing operating rules, Korea is still deciding who can issue
IOSG said MAS published a consultation paper on Sept. 1 proposing amendments to the Payment Services Act to implement its stablecoin framework. The proposal would ban interest payments to holders, require reserve assets to cover at least 100% of liabilities and be segregated from issuer assets, mandate monthly independent attestations and annual audits, and add stress testing and orderly wind-down plans. Stablecoins that do not meet the requirements would not be banned, but they would be treated only as ordinary digital payment tokens. The consultation closed on Oct. 16, and the next step is subsidiary legislation.
That stands in contrast to Seoul, where the won stablecoin debate is still stuck on issuance eligibility, especially whether banks must own 51% of the issuer. IOSG’s comparison was blunt: one market is still arguing over entry qualifications, while the other is already setting operating rules.
Shared signals across both cities
IOSG grouped the common signals from Seoul and Singapore into three areas.
- AI: attention has arrived before product-market fit. AI dominated side events in both cities, but no one has shown clear PMF yet. Real agent transaction volume remains small, and average transaction sizes are low. IOSG said the near-term winners are more likely to be infrastructure layers around identity, authorization, settlement and risk controls than the “smartest” agent itself.
- Payments: the conversation has moved from the stage to the back office. IOSG said stablecoin payments and payment rails were almost standard side-event topics a year ago, but none of the events it attended this time focused on payments alone. Volume, however, has not fallen. It cited at least $401 billion in identifiable stablecoin payment volume from January through August this year, up 42% year over year, and annualized stablecoin settlement volume above $20 billion at Visa. In IOSG’s view, payments have become a licensed B2B business better discussed in bank meeting rooms than at parties.
- Perpetual DEXs and prediction markets: still active, but not the new story. KBW had Perp-DEX Day and about 27 DeFi and trading side events. Singapore had the same familiar names. The sectors still draw attention, but they are no longer the central new theme of the year.
Where capital is moving
Beyond the mood at conferences, IOSG said it is more interested in where money is going. Combining what it heard in both cities with on-chain data, the firm argued that capital is now moving along four broad lines. The common thread is that narrative-driven money is fading, while revenue-driven money is coming in.
Crypto-native capital is concentrating in perpetual DEXs and prediction markets
IOSG said crypto-native money has not left the market. It has shifted from buying new tokens to trading inside venues. Hyperliquid, in its view, is no longer just a perpetual DEX but an open trading platform. HIP-3 allows third parties to deploy markets on top of it. Over its first year, those markets generated about $665 billion in cumulative volume. Over the last 30 days, they generated about $64.7 billion, or roughly 27% of Hyperliquid’s total volume, as of Oct. 20. The product mix has also expanded from crypto assets into commodities, U.S. equities and pre-IPO contracts. By July, single-stock and pre-IPO products accounted for 62% of HIP-3 volume. On Sept. 8, Hyperliquid’s total open interest reached a record $14.3 billion.
In prediction markets, Kalshi and Polymarket together handled about $45.3 billion in August. IOSG said that was the first month-over-month decline since the World Cup, down about 15%, though September football season brought volume back up. It also noted that leading platforms are already extending into adjacent categories: Hyperliquid into options, Kalshi into perpetuals and Polymarket into on-chain assets.
Compliant capital is moving toward fintech and stablecoins
Traditional finance is entering crypto by buying access points and rails rather than tokens, IOSG said. In Korea, that means exchange equity and licenses. In Singapore, it means custody, tokenization and settlement layers. The return profile for this capital looks more like fintech, focused on licenses, distribution and take rate rather than token premiums.
The altcoin focus is shifting toward AI products with revenue
IOSG said AI agents on stage are still framed in future tense, but public markets have already started assigning value to AI products that generate revenue now. Venice.ai’s annualized revenue exceeded $100 million in August. Since late 2025, it has used part of monthly revenue to buy back and burn VVV, and since July it has also directed 5% of API revenue to buybacks and burns. Grass reported $17 million in revenue for 2025 and another $17 million in the first half of 2026, with a full-year target of $75 million. IOSG noted that these figures are company-reported and unaudited. Its conclusion was that AI tokens that remain relevant will do so because they have paying users and a mechanism that routes revenue back to the token, not because of agent narratives alone.
Meme and speculative capital is clustering around profitable trading gateways
IOSG said meme speculation has not disappeared, but value capture has shifted to the tool layer. Citing DeFiLlama, it said Fomo overtook GMGN in July on seven-day revenue to become the highest-revenue trading app across chains, with weekly revenue peaking at $1.57 million. The company completed a $75 million Series B in June at a $550 million valuation. Rabby Wallet generates about $4 million to $5 million in annualized swap fees and has also connected to perpetuals through Hyperliquid’s builder code, bringing in about $740 million in volume over the last 30 days. The report’s point was simple: individual meme cycles are getting shorter, while the durable money is being made by gateways that control traffic and can route that traffic into perpetual DEXs.
Risks IOSG flagged
IOSG ended with several cautions. Trading activity is highly concentrated and regulation remains incomplete: about 97% of HIP-3 volume sits on trade.xyz alone, and MAS does not consider Hyperliquid to be within its perimeter. Prediction-market volume is tied closely to sports calendars and already showed its first pullback in August. Revenue figures for AI products and trading apps are often self-reported or heavily dependent on meme activity, which means the durability of buybacks depends on whether revenue can keep growing.
What IOSG is watching next
IOSG closed by saying the conference floor may feel cooler, but business has not disappeared. Attention has shifted toward AI, while money continues to move through the back end of payments. It described South Korea as moving from “the world’s most active retail market” toward “the most instructive institutionalization case study,” with capital, licenses and distribution already lining up before regulation is fully settled. Singapore, by contrast, is a case where venue growth has topped out, institutions have taken over the second day of the agenda, and regulators are filling in the operating details for stablecoins.
The next milestones it listed are South Korea’s STO implementation rules this autumn, the Naver-Dunamu shareholder meeting in November, the Nov. 20 deadline for VASP re-registration, and the final version of the won stablecoin bill. In Singapore, IOSG said the key items are the subsidiary legislation for the MAS stablecoin framework and whether MAS will take a formal position on decentralized platforms such as Hyperliquid.