Liquidity 2026: Where Global Institutions Converged On The Future Of Digital Assets And TradFi
From 2023 to 2026, from Hong Kong to a worldwide stage, establishments from world wide convened as soon as once more. As the subsequent decade of digital property unfolds, LTP appears to be like forward alongside the business.
What does it really feel like to look at—at shut vary—the front-line pulse of digital property and conventional finance (TradFi) amid market volatility?
On February 9, 2026, Liquidity 2026, the annual flagship institutional digital asset summit hosted by LTP Hong Kong, concluded efficiently in Hong Kong. Now in its fourth consecutive 12 months, the occasion as soon as once more introduced collectively senior representatives from hedge funds, market makers, high-frequency buying and selling companies, household workplaces, asset managers, exchanges, custodians, banks, and know-how service suppliers, marking one other milestone within the accelerating convergence of digital property and conventional monetary markets.
Throughout the full-day agenda, the summit featured keynote addresses, fireplace chats, and in-depth roundtable discussions. Speakers and contributors engaged in rigorous exchanges across the evolution of the worldwide monetary system, the rise of tokenization, and the fast integration of multi-asset ecosystems—exploring what new alternatives and new paradigms could emerge as institutional adoption deepens.
As the summit drew to a detailed, a transparent consensus emerged throughout various views: at a turning level within the reshaping of the worldwide monetary panorama, infrastructure improvement, regulatory dialogue, and cross-institutional collaboration would be the essential variables shaping the business’s sustainable progress.
This was not merely a discussion board for concepts, however a defining step within the digital asset business’s development towards standardization, institutionalization, and mainstream relevance.
Full Agenda Highlights and Key Takeaways
At Liquidity 2026, LTP convened international specialists to look at the way forward for institutional digital asset markets by way of a number of lenses—together with core infrastructure, liquidity connectivity, tokenization, and rising market paradigms.
Multi-Asset Trading and Market Convergence: Compatibility and Resilience
Participants broadly agreed that crypto property are more and more being redefined as a core asset class that have to be built-in into institutional portfolio administration frameworks, relatively than handled as a standalone various market. Stephan Lutz, CEO of BitMEX, famous that CIOs can now not afford to disregard this asset class. As establishments formally incorporate digital property into allocation frameworks, the design logic of buying and selling programs is shifting—from pursuing peak efficiency to enabling seamless integration inside current governance constructions, API architectures, and danger controls.
System resilience was repeatedly emphasised. Tom Higgins, Founder and CEO of Gold-i, remarked throughout a roundtable that system design should assume failure as inevitable, with redundancy and survivability achieved by way of multi-venue aggregation. At a macro degree, regulatory fragmentation stays a key impediment to international market interoperability; with out cross-jurisdictional alignment, real multi-asset convergence will stay constrained.
The New Settlement Layer: Clearing, Custody, and Interoperability
Discussions round settlement and custody pointed to a transparent path: custodians are evolving from passive asset safekeeping towards changing into a core infrastructure layer supporting clearing, settlement, and danger administration. As institutional participation grows, custody is now not considered solely as a compliance requirement, however as a essential nexus connecting regulatory certainty with operational scalability.
The definition of belief can be evolving. Ian Loh, CEO of Ceffu, emphasised that belief have to be embedded in executable on-chain mechanisms, with property producing tangible yield by way of collaboration between custodians and prime brokers. The significance of mature third-party know-how has grow to be more and more evident. Amy Zhang, Head of APAC at Fireblocks, highlighted the business’s rising reliance on established infrastructure suppliers, noting that Europe is rising as a strategic hub for institutional digital property because of its regulatory readability and infrastructure maturity.
Technological redundancy was extensively seen as important to mitigating systemic disruptions. As Darren Jordan, Chief Commercial Officer at Komainu, noticed, the way forward for custody lies in asset usability—shifting the core query from whether or not property are safely saved as to whether they are often securely and reliably mobilized.
Rebuilding Infrastructure and the Price of Data
Johann Kerbrat, SVP and GM of Robinhood Crypto, shared how Robinhood is evolving from a crypto buying and selling platform right into a general-purpose monetary infrastructure supplier, leveraging blockchain to re-architect funds, settlement, and conventional asset buying and selling—whereas abstracting complexity away from the tip consumer.
In his view, TradFi’s core bottleneck stays settlement effectivity, typically working at T+1 or longer, whereas crypto-native programs provide 24/7 availability, near-instant transfers, and composability that materially scale back capital prices and counterparty danger. Within regulatory frameworks, Robinhood is advancing fairness tokenization on a totally collateralized, 1:1 foundation, anticipating that tokenization will increase past stablecoins into equities, ETFs, and personal markets. The central problem, he argued, lies not in know-how, however in regulatory implementation and collective adoption.
Cory Loo, Head of APAC at Pyth Network, described market information as a structurally underappreciated business—producing over $50 billion in annual income, with information prices rising greater than 15-fold over the previous 25 years. The true price, he famous, stems not from data asymmetry, however from information high quality, which finally determines whether or not merchants obtain finest execution.
Pyth Network goals to reconstruct conventional information pipelines by bringing value inputs immediately from buying and selling companies and exchanges right into a shared value layer, which is then redistributed to establishments at larger high quality and decrease price with millisecond-level multi-asset updates. Loo disclosed that Pyth Pro attracted over 80 subscribers inside two months of launch, reaching greater than $1 million in ARR in its first month. The venture additionally plans to implement a value-capture mechanism whereby subscription income flows right into a DAO, which repurchases tokens and builds long-term reserves.
Institutional Capital Allocation: From Speculation to Systematic Exposure
A notable shift in capital allocation is underway. Institutional capital is rotating away from narrative-driven property towards devices with clear demand drivers and regulatory visibility. Fabian Dori, CIO of Sygnum, noticed that as metaverse narratives light, establishments have refocused on leveraging good contracts for value-chain integration and course of automation. Risk administration has more and more displaced return hypothesis as the first screening criterion.
Tokenization is extensively anticipated to drive structural, relatively than incremental, change—however scale will rely upon demonstrable consumer demand relatively than technological functionality alone. Interest in index-based and structured merchandise is rising, and Giovanni Vicioso, Global Head of Cryptocurrency Products at CME Group, famous that the long run market panorama will probably be outlined by the coexistence of a number of applied sciences and market constructions.
Trading Convergence: Bridging Liquidity, Pricing, and Risk
In discussions on liquidity and danger administration, contributors centered on system stability throughout excessive market circumstances. Jeremi Long, CIO of Ludisia, highlighted how infrastructure upgrades have materially improved execution high quality, whereas emphasizing that danger administration have to be designed for worst-case situations.
Improving cross-venue capital effectivity was recognized as a key resolution to fragmented capital deployment. Collaborative fashions between exchanges and custodians—enabling shared capital swimming pools—are more and more being explored. In this context, transparency has grow to be paramount. Giuseppe Giuliani, Vice President of Kraken’s Institutional staff, harassed that liquidity is determined by dangers being clearly priced, and that change transparency and operational stability immediately affect market-maker participation.
Building Institutional Rails for the Digital Asset Economy
At the institutional and infrastructure degree, a number of case research counsel a shift from proof-of-concept to real-world deployment. Stablecoin pilots in insurance coverage and funds exhibit the tangible effectivity positive factors of on-chain settlement. Some establishments are actually exploring migrating flagship merchandise immediately on-chain to entry broader international liquidity.
System stability is more and more considered as a type of income safety. Zeng Xin, Senior Web3 Solutions Architect at AWS, famous that stability features as “revenue insurance coverage,” with cloud infrastructure offering the resilience and elasticity required for digital markets. Meanwhile, conventional regulatory frameworks proceed to impose structural constraints on capital allocation. Sherry Zhu, Global Head of Digital Assets at Futu Holdings Limited for Futu Group, emphasised that belief and comfort signify core alternatives for brokerage platforms, whereas acknowledging the capital constraints imposed by frameworks akin to Basel. Balancing compliance, privateness, and custody stays a essential threshold for institutional participation in DeFi.
Everything as Collateral: RWA, Stablecoins, and Tokenized Credit
Debates round whether or not tokenized property can function core collateral are shifting from idea to observe. Compared with conventional constructions, on-chain collateral—enabled by 24/7 settlement—is healthier suited to fulfill sudden margin necessities in derivatives markets. However, authorized readability stays the figuring out issue.
Chetan Karkhanis, SVP at Franklin Templeton, emphasised the significance of selecting natively on-chain asset constructions relatively than digital replicas, guaranteeing a single supply of authorized fact. Regulatory classification and its affect on capital necessities are equally essential. Institutions evaluating tokenized collateral are likely to give attention to 4 dimensions: authorized possession, operational danger, custody preparations, and liquidity depth.
Beyond the Hype: Where the Industry Goes Next
As the summit concluded, contributors converged on a shared view: tokenization alone doesn’t represent a aggressive benefit. The true differentiator lies in whether or not it delivers measurable enhancements throughout reserves, buying and selling, or settlement.
Erkan Kaya, CEO of ABEX, recommended that tokenization has the potential to completely take in conventional finance into crypto-native programs, with a tipping level prone to emerge over the subsequent decade. As regulatory credentials, system stability, and consumer expertise grow to be decisive elements, the evolution of economic infrastructure seems irreversible. Digital property are now not a peripheral complement to TradFi, however a pressure more and more able to reshaping its working logic and energy constructions.
Moses Lee, Head of APAC at Anchorage Digital, summarized the sentiment succinctly: tokenization doesn’t equal success—its worth is determined by delivering clear purposeful benefits in reserves, buying and selling, or settlement.
Closing Thoughts
For LTP, the business’s transition right into a extra mature part—marked by the fading of hype—additionally represents the optimum second for infrastructure, compliance, and sustainable innovation to take root. We stay firmly satisfied that lasting worth creation resides within the foundational programs that quietly assist market operations.
From 2023 to 2026, from regional markets to a worldwide perspective, LTP has remained dedicated to observing, documenting, and actively collaborating within the structural, institutional, and regulatory evolution of the digital asset business. The profitable conclusion of Liquidity 2026 marks one other significant milestone in our long-term effort to advance the combination of digital property and TradFi.
Looking forward, LTP will proceed to take a position closely in ecosystem improvement—championing extra resilient infrastructure and extra open collaboration—to assist form the subsequent decade of digital property.
With infrastructure build-out, regulatory engagement, and cross-institutional collaboration converging, a more healthy, extra skilled, and more and more mainstream digital asset period is taking form.
While Liquidity 2026 has simply concluded, the marathon towards deep digital asset–TradFi integration is barely coming into its second half. As a long-term participant and observer, LTP will proceed to dedicate assets to ecosystem constructing and business dialogue, serving to to usher within the subsequent decade of digital property.
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