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Events

Conference coverage and event news, including the events Crypto Coin Show partners with and reports from. For the full schedule see the crypto events calendar.

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From the interview archive
Related: FundraisingWeb3Institutional
Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson speaking on stage at a crypto conference
Blockchain

Hoskinson pitches Midnight’s Night Mode on TOKEN2049 main stage

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DeFiCrypto Coin Show News Team·October 8, 2026·3 min read

Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson used his Midnight keynote at TOKEN2049 Singapore on October 8 to argue that today’s smart contracts are too limited and too transparent, pitching Midnight’s Night Mode privacy stack as the fix. The talk followed a public complaint from Hoskinson that Midnight was left off the community-funded Cardano booth at the event.

  • Hoskinson presented Night Mode, which combines zero-knowledge proofs, multi-party computation and trusted execution environments on Midnight.
  • Midnight also showed Midnight Passport, a Collateral Warehouse and Offer Files, and reports cite a Solana wallet integration for private swaps.
  • Hoskinson publicly criticized the community-funded Cardano booth for leaving Midnight out of its ecosystem display.

Charles Hoskinson brought a pointed message to the main stage at TOKEN2049 Singapore on Thursday: smart contracts as most chains run them today are not good enough for serious financial or enterprise use. His “Midnight City” keynote, listed on the conference agenda for October 8, came a day after he posted on X that “Midnight has become the where’s waldo of Cardano,” a jab at the Cardano booth on the expo floor that did not feature the privacy network.

Hoskinson says public smart contracts hit a ceiling

According to reports from Crypto Times and Crypto Briefing, Hoskinson argued that current smart contracts are constrained in what they can compute and expose every intermediate step on a public ledger. That combination, in his framing, keeps banks, corporates and identity providers away from on-chain applications that would reveal client data or trading intent.

His answer is what Midnight calls Night Mode, described in some coverage as the Night Frame. It layers three privacy tools: zero-knowledge proofs, multi-party computation and trusted execution environments. The aim is to let applications run sensitive logic privately while still settling on-chain, with selective disclosure written in Midnight’s Compact programming language.

Midnight shows a wider product set

Alongside Night Mode, the Midnight team presented Midnight Passport, a Collateral Warehouse and Offer Files, according to the same reports. Detailed specifications for those products were not published with the keynote, so their scope and launch timing remain unconfirmed. Crypto Briefing and BlockWeeks also reported a Solana wallet integration that supports private swaps, part of a push to pull users from other chains.

Midnight is a partner chain built by Input Output, the Cardano engineering firm Hoskinson leads. Its genesis block went live in March 2026. The network uses NIGHT, a governance and utility token with a fixed supply of 24 billion, and DUST, a shielded resource used to pay transaction fees. Crypto Times reported that Hoskinson said he has put roughly $200 million into Midnight’s development.

The booth dispute exposes Cardano governance friction

In a follow-up post, Hoskinson argued the booth is a public asset paid for with community treasury money and should showcase the largest projects in the ecosystem. The Cardano TOKEN2049 page lists projects such as Minswap, Iagon, Hydra and the Snek Foundation at the shared booth. Public information does not show who decided Midnight’s absence or whether the project applied for a spot, and the Cardano Foundation had not publicly explained the omission at the time of reporting.

The episode lands weeks after Input Output lost a Cardano treasury vote, a sign that funding decisions inside the ecosystem are increasingly contested between Input Output, the Cardano Foundation and token holders.

The CCS read. Privacy is shaping up as one of the main unsolved problems for institutional on-chain finance. The tokenization panels at TOKEN2049 featured BlackRock, Fidelity and Morgan Stanley, and none of those firms will move client positions onto chains where every balance and trade is visible to competitors. Midnight is betting that a mix of cryptography and hardware enclaves can satisfy both compliance teams and confidentiality needs. The pitch is credible on paper, but stacking three complex technologies raises engineering risk, and trusted execution environments depend on specific chip vendors. The public booth spat is also a reminder that Cardano’s decentralized governance can work against coordinated go-to-market efforts at exactly the moments institutions are watching.

Watch for published specifications and developer documentation for Night Mode, Midnight Passport and the Collateral Warehouse, any live institutional pilots, and whether the Cardano Foundation responds on booth selection. Follow all our TOKEN2049 coverage, and read our earlier report on how Input Output lost a Cardano treasury vote.

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Franklin Templeton Investments sign at the company headquarters campus in San Mateo, California
Blockchain

Franklin’s Jenny Johnson says rival tokenized funds are digital twins

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Real World AssetsCrypto Coin Show News Team·October 8, 2026·4 min read

Franklin Templeton CEO Jenny Johnson used her TOKEN2049 Singapore stage time to argue that many rival tokenized funds are “digital twins” that keep ownership records off-chain. She held up the firm’s BENJI platform, which records fund ownership on public blockchains, as the alternative.

  • Johnson said many competing tokenized funds mirror traditional products while keeping the real share register in legacy systems.
  • She pointed to BENJI, launched in 2021, as a fund whose official ownership record lives on a public blockchain.
  • Binance co-CEO Richard Teng, also on the TOKEN2049 program, said demand for tokenized stocks is strong but information flow is holding back private markets.

Franklin Templeton chief executive Jenny Johnson took aim at how much of the industry is building tokenized funds, according to reports from Crypto Briefing and crypto.news. Her case rests on the firm’s own product: Franklin says its Franklin OnChain U.S. Government Money Fund (FOBXX) was the first U.S.-registered mutual fund to use a public blockchain as its official system of record when it launched in 2021.

Johnson says a token is not the same as an on-chain fund

Johnson described many competing products as “digital twin” funds. In her framing, a digital twin issues a token that represents a fund share, while the authoritative record of who owns what stays in a transfer agent’s conventional database. The blockchain becomes a distribution wrapper rather than the ledger itself.

BENJI works the other way, she argued, because ownership is written on-chain. Crypto Briefing reported that she put BENJI’s cost at about $1.13 per transaction against roughly $150 through traditional processing. Crypto.news said it could not verify the $150 figure and noted that Johnson framed the legacy comparison differently on Franklin’s January 2026 earnings call, so that number should be treated with caution.

According to crypto.news, the official agenda placed Johnson alongside Binance co-CEO Richard Teng and Canton Network CEO Yuval Rooz in a discussion of tokenized assets, liquidity and on-chain settlement.

BENJI has grown into a multi-chain platform

BENJI started on Stellar and now runs across Polygon, Arbitrum, Avalanche, Aptos, Ethereum, Base, Solana and BNB Smart Chain, per crypto.news. The platform accrues yield every second and distributes it daily, a feature Franklin announced in 2025.

Data from RWA.xyz cited by crypto.news showed about $2.60 billion across four Franklin products on October 8, second among tokenized U.S. Treasury fund platforms. The firm also used BENJI tokens as part of the payment for its acquisition of 250 Digital, which closed on June 22. In August, SEC staff issued a no-action letter allowing affiliated Franklin funds to invest in BENJI. That letter reflects a staff position, not a formal Commission ruling.

Binance’s Teng says information, not demand, is the bottleneck

Teng made a related point about the other side of the tokenization trade. According to Crypto Briefing, he said appetite for tokenized stocks and private market products is high, but poor information flow limits growth in private markets. Public equities, with regular disclosures and price discovery, have an easier path on-chain than private company stakes, he said. Crypto Briefing put tokenized stocks above $3 billion in on-chain value by September 2026.

The CCS read. Johnson is drawing a line that institutional allocators will increasingly have to draw themselves. A token that points to an off-chain register inherits the settlement times, cutoffs and reconciliation costs of the old system, so the efficiency case for tokenization only fully applies when the blockchain is the record. That matters for collateral use: exchanges and lenders that accept tokenized money funds as margin need confidence that an on-chain transfer is a legal transfer of ownership. Expect issuers to be pressed on exactly where their share register lives, and expect that question to shape which products win distribution on crypto venues over the next year.

Watch for whether BlackRock, Ondo and other large issuers respond to the digital twin critique, and for any further SEC staff guidance on tokenized fund records. Follow all our TOKEN2049 coverage, and read our report on Aave’s Stani Kulechov on tokenized stock loans.

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Samsung Wallet and Solana stablecoin partnership graphic
Blockchain

Samsung Wallet adds USDC transfers for 82 million US Galaxy phones

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StablecoinsCrypto Coin Show News Team·October 8, 2026·4 min read

Samsung Electronics America says Samsung Wallet will let eligible US Galaxy users buy, hold and send USDC starting the last week of October, with Bastion, Coinbase, Solana and Sui behind the service. The news lands hours before Samsung Wallet and the Solana Foundation share the OKX Main Stage at TOKEN2049 Singapore.

  • About 82 million US Galaxy devices running Android 13 or later are compatible at launch, according to Samsung.
  • Bastion is the licensed custodian and money transmitter, with Coinbase holding the USDC as sub-custodian through Coinbase Prime Vault.
  • Users will be able to send USDC to outside crypto wallets with no Samsung fee, or to bank accounts in more than 60 countries in local currency.

Samsung is putting a dollar stablecoin inside one of the most widely installed wallets in the US. In a Samsung Electronics America newsroom post dated October 7, the company said Samsung Wallet will add stablecoin access for eligible Galaxy users in the last week of October 2026, starting with USDC. Woncheol Chai, who heads the Digital Wallet Team in Samsung’s Mobile eXperience business, said sending money abroad should feel “as convenient as using the wallet already on your phone.” Samsung said users will not need a separate app or have to manage private keys.

Samsung leans on regulated partners rather than holding funds itself

Samsung’s post says it is not a bank, money transmitter or custodian. That work goes to Bastion, which said in its own release that it handles custody, per-user ledgers, identity checks, address screening and sanctions monitoring. Bastion holds a New York trust charter and has conditional OCC approval for a national trust bank charter. Coinbase acts as sub-custodian, holding the USDC in Coinbase Prime Vault. Bastion CEO Nassim Eddequiouaq said financial infrastructure “works best when people don’t have to see it.”

Eligibility is limited to US residents aged 18 or older with a Samsung Account, a compatible Galaxy device and completed identity verification and biometric setup. Every transfer requires biometric approval on a registered device. Samsung said USDC will be the default dollar stablecoin under its “Buy Stablecoin” option.

Solana and Sui both claim a piece of the rails

Samsung names Solana and Sui as partners providing blockchain network support, and Bastion’s release says the same. The Solana Foundation’s announcement frames the deal as Samsung choosing Solana, while some early reports credited Sui alone, which led to conflicting headlines overnight. Based on the Samsung and Bastion releases, both networks are in the service, though Samsung has not said how transfers will be split between them. Solana Foundation president Lily Liu said the partnership “puts digital dollars into everyday life.”

The Solana Foundation also said stablecoin supply on Solana is up nearly 20% year over year and that the network has processed more than $5.25 trillion in stablecoin volume so far in 2026.

Remittances first, tap-to-pay later

At launch, the feature covers transfers. Samsung said sending USDC to compatible external wallets or exchange accounts carries no Samsung fee, though recipient platforms may charge their own. Bank transfers to more than 60 countries carry fees that vary by destination and amount, and the app shows the fee and estimated delivery time before the user confirms. Samsung and Bastion both said paying online and tapping a Galaxy phone in stores are planned, with more markets to follow subject to local rules. Neither gave dates.

The CCS read. The stablecoin race is shifting from issuance to distribution, and an operating system wallet on tens of millions of phones is about as direct a channel as exists. The structure matters as much as the reach: Samsung keeps the user relationship while a chartered custodian and Coinbase carry the regulatory load, a template other consumer platforms can copy without becoming money transmitters. For Circle, a default slot in Samsung Wallet is valuable shelf space for USDC. For Solana and Sui, sharing the rails means the real scorecard will be onchain transfer data once the feature is live, not press releases.

Watch the “A New Era for Money” panel on the OKX Main Stage at 2:20 pm Singapore time today, where Samsung Wallet’s Wonseok Baek is scheduled to join the Solana Foundation’s Vibhu Norby, then the late October rollout and which chain carries most early volume. Follow all our TOKEN2049 coverage, and read how World Liberty is pushing USD1 into online checkout.

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Aave founder Stani Kulechov speaking on a conference stage
DeFi

Aave’s Kulechov sees tokenized stock loans overtaking crypto loans

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Real World AssetsCrypto Coin Show News Team·October 7, 2026·4 min read

Aave founder Stani Kulechov told a TOKEN2049 Singapore panel on Wednesday that lending against tokenized stocks and other real-world assets could overtake crypto-backed lending on Aave next year. Ethena CEO Guy Young and Synthetix founder Kain Warwick joined him to argue that DeFi rails are becoming the plumbing for traditional assets.

  • Kulechov said tokenized stock and RWA lending could pass native crypto lending on Aave as soon as next year, pointing to the new Equities Hub on Base.
  • He put borrowing costs against on-chain shares near 5%, which he said undercuts traditional over-the-counter stock lending.
  • Ethena’s Guy Young said smart-contract protocols can cut operating costs by about 95% versus banks, while Kain Warwick said regulatory clarity will decide the next wave of token adoption.

The remarks came during the “DeFi’s Institutional Breakthrough” session on day one of TOKEN2049 Singapore at Marina Bay Sands, moderated by a16z crypto’s Robbie Petersen, according to TokenPost’s report from the panel and a separate account from Coinotag. Kulechov used the stage to frame Aave less as a crypto lending app and more as a credit network that can sit underneath stocks, savings and AI-driven payments.

Kulechov points to the Equities Hub as proof

The forecast rests on a product that went live two weeks ago. On September 25, Aave opened an Equities Hub on its V4 deployment on Base that lets eligible non-US users deposit seven Coinbase-issued tokenized stocks, including Apple, Nvidia and Tesla, and borrow USDC against them, The Block reported. Risk provider LlamaRisk set initial collateral caps of roughly $29 million across the seven stocks, with Chainlink feeds handling pricing.

Those caps are small next to Aave’s own history. Kulechov noted the protocol’s liquidity peaked at about $76 billion last year, according to both reports. His argument is that loans near 5% against on-chain shares are already cheaper than the OTC desks wealthy stockholders use today, and that cost gap will pull volume on-chain once supply caps rise. He also said Aave is building a global savings account aimed at people who do not use crypto at all.

Ethena and Synthetix say the yield gap is the pitch

Young described how Ethena pivoted after crypto yields fell close to zero in the bear market while real-world risk-free rates sat near 5%. That pushed the firm toward real-world asset infrastructure, savings products and its Ethena Pay launch. He contrasted bank deposits that pay 0.5% or nothing with DeFi products passing more than 5% to users, and said protocols can run at roughly 95% lower cost than banks carrying compliance, legal and licensing teams across jurisdictions. Coinotag reported he described the business as “packaging trust.” Ethena’s USDe supply sits around $15 billion, per the panel reports.

Warwick, who now runs Infinex, offered a more cautious angle. He said regulatory uncertainty has made many altcoins less attractive than ordinary stocks, which is partly why crypto rails ended up carrying tokenized equities. Infinex controls the user-facing app while keeping its back end neutral, he said, and the next wave of token adoption depends on clearer rules.

AI agents enter the lending conversation

All three touched on software as a future customer. Kulechov said AI agents can open on-chain accounts far more easily than bank accounts and that machine-initiated on-chain transactions could eventually outnumber human ones. Warwick said agents could route idle cash toward protocols with long operating records, which favors incumbents like Aave over newer venues.

The CCS read. This is the clearest statement yet from a top DeFi founder that the next leg of on-chain credit is about equities, not altcoins. For institutions, the pitch is concrete: around-the-clock collateral, transparent liquidation rules and borrowing costs that Kulechov says beat OTC stock lending. The constraint is equally concrete. The Equities Hub is capped near $29 million and closed to US users, so the “overtake” call depends on issuers like Coinbase scaling supply and on regulators letting US holders in. Treat it as a direction of travel from Aave’s founder, not a measured trend yet.

Watch whether Aave governance lifts the Equities Hub collateral and USDC caps in the coming weeks, and whether GHO is added as a borrowable asset against equities, which The Block said remains subject to governance and risk review. For background, see our look at tokenized stocks in DeFi vaults, and follow all our TOKEN2049 coverage.

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Dragonfly managing partner Haseeb Qureshi speaking on stage at TechCrunch Disrupt 2024
Agentic Finance

Dragonfly’s Haseeb Qureshi says AI agents do not need crypto

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AI NewsCrypto Coin Show News Team·October 7, 2026·4 min read

Dragonfly managing partner Haseeb Qureshi used a TOKEN2049 Singapore keynote on October 7 to walk back his own thesis that AI agents would mostly pay with crypto. He argued card networks already serve agents well and that crypto’s real job is protecting people, not bots.

  • Qureshi said he was wrong to expect agents to default to crypto rails, according to ChainCatcher’s compiled text of the talk.
  • He pointed to agent-focused card products from Visa, Stripe, Ramp and Rain as evidence traditional finance adapted faster than he expected.
  • He recast crypto, together with private AI, as a last line of defense for individual privacy as AI strips away friction.

Haseeb Qureshi, managing partner of venture firm Dragonfly, used his TOKEN2049 Singapore keynote, titled “Agents + Crypto: What’s Real & What’s Cope,” to reverse one of the industry’s favorite narratives. According to ChainCatcher’s compiled text of the speech, he summed up his new view as “your agent does not need crypto; you need crypto.” CCS could not find a recording or a second outlet’s full account of the talk at the time of writing, so the details below rely on ChainCatcher’s version, which may differ from the delivery in places.

Qureshi says card networks moved faster than he expected

Qureshi said he had been wrong to assume agents would mostly transact in crypto and that traditional finance would not be ready for them. Visa, Stripe, Ramp and Rain have all launched agentic card products, and he said he mostly pays through a card himself. He added that growth in crypto-based agent payments peaked around last November and has declined since. A shorter ChainCatcher summary framed the takeaway the same way: the idea that agents would broadly adopt crypto payments has not held up, and cards are well placed to carry agent spending.

He questioned how much x402 volume is real

The sharpest claim concerned x402, the open protocol Coinbase introduced for agent payments over the web. Per ChainCatcher, Qureshi said roughly 90% of x402 payment volume comes from users exploiting rewards rather than from genuine agent commerce. That figure appears only in ChainCatcher’s account, and the report cites no underlying data, so it is best read as his estimate rather than a measured statistic.

Crypto’s job is protecting people, he argued

The second half of the talk turned to privacy and self-custody. Qureshi argued that personal privacy has historically rested on friction, the effort it took to watch or track someone, and that AI removes that friction. He cited reports that physical attacks on crypto holders reached record levels in 2025 and 2026. In that world, he said, crypto and private AI act as individuals’ last defense against surveillance. He pointed to growth in Zcash shielded addresses as evidence that better user experience drives privacy adoption. He also highlighted Venice, a private AI service that users can access with an Ethereum address and pay for in stablecoins. Dragonfly is an investor in Venice.

The CCS read. When one of crypto’s most active venture investors says the agent-payments thesis was oversold, allocators should listen. Many projects and tokens launched over the past year were pitched on the premise that machine-to-machine commerce would default to stablecoins. If card networks absorb most agent spending instead, the case for many of those tokens weakens, and investors should ask agent-payment projects for volume figures net of incentive programs. Qureshi’s privacy argument points capital in a different direction, toward shielded transactions, self-custody security and private compute. Those are also the areas that draw the most regulatory scrutiny, which makes them higher-conviction and higher-risk bets at the same time.

Watch whether Coinbase or x402 contributors publish data separating incentive-driven volume from organic agent payments, and whether other investors at TOKEN2049 echo the shift. Qureshi is also listed to moderate Chopping Block Live on day two. For a builder’s view of agent commerce, read our interview on how Daski handles what happens after an agent pays, and follow all our TOKEN2049 coverage on the live hub.

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Screenshot of the Hyperliquid web trading interface
DeFi

Hyperliquid’s Jeff Yan names options as the exchange’s next product

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Exchange NewsCrypto Coin Show News Team·October 7, 2026·3 min read

Hyperliquid founder and CEO Jeff Yan told a TOKEN2049 Singapore audience on October 7 that options will be the decentralized exchange’s next major product. He also said markets built under its HIP-3 framework drove about half of platform volume at their July peak.

  • Jeff Yan named options as Hyperliquid’s next key product focus, according to PANews and Phemex reports of his TOKEN2049 session.
  • Options would sit on the same order book as spot and perpetual futures, so traders can hedge positions in one place.
  • Yan said HIP-3 markets accounted for about 51% of Hyperliquid trading volume at one point in July.

Hyperliquid is adding a third leg to its trading stack. Speaking at TOKEN2049 Singapore at Marina Bay Sands on Wednesday, founder and CEO Jeff Yan said options are the platform’s “next key product focus,” according to a PANews report of the session. He gave no launch date, fee schedule or list of underlying assets, and Hyperliquid had not published a formal announcement at the time of writing.

Options would share one order book with perps

Per PANews and a Phemex summary, Yan described options living on the same order book as Hyperliquid’s spot and perpetual futures markets. The pitch is risk management. A trader holding a perpetual position could buy protection or sell premium against it without moving collateral to a separate venue. That matters for professional desks, which often run directional exposure on one platform and hedge with options somewhere else. Neither report described margin treatment, the settlement asset or which markets would list first.

HIP-3 markets drove about half of volume in July

Yan also put a number on HIP-3, the framework that lets builders deploy their own perpetual markets on Hyperliquid. According to ChainCatcher and a Foresight News report republished by KuCoin, he said HIP-3 markets accounted for about 51% of the platform’s trading volume at one point in July. He cited it as evidence of product-market fit and pointed to perpetuals on real-world assets, such as crude oil and pre-IPO shares, as the standout use cases. He did not say what the share is today.

Yan pitches Hyperliquid as infrastructure, not a rival

Yan framed Hyperliquid as an open protocol that other businesses build on rather than a competitor to the apps that sit on top of it. Builder Codes let developers launch mobile apps and institutional trading terminals that plug into Hyperliquid’s markets and liquidity without running their own matching or clearing. “No one is competing with the internet,” he said, per ChainCatcher. He also argued that in traditional finance, early-stage assets are often open only to a privileged few, and that on-chain markets can widen access. In separate remarks reported by KuCoin, he said AI agents will need financial rails that move value as easily as data, with compliance sitting above the protocol layer rather than inside it.

The CCS read. Options are where on-chain derivatives have historically struggled to build liquidity, and they are also where institutional hedging demand concentrates. If Hyperliquid can put options next to perps on one book with shared collateral, it removes one of the main reasons funds keep a centralized venue open alongside it. The 51% HIP-3 figure is a peak, not a run rate, but it shows that third-party markets, including real-world asset perps, can carry a large share of activity on the venue. That success also invites scrutiny: perps on oil and private company shares offer price exposure outside traditional market structure, and regulators in the US and Asia are paying closer attention to offshore leverage.

Watch for a Hyperliquid improvement proposal or testnet release that spells out options margin, underlyings and timing. Our earlier look at Hyperliquid’s open position surge tracks how positioning on the venue has shifted, and you can follow all our TOKEN2049 coverage on the live hub.

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Eric Trump speaking on stage at the Consensus 2025 crypto conference
Events

Eric Trump says family hotel business is studying stablecoin pay

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StablecoinsCrypto Coin Show News Team·October 7, 2026·3 min read

Eric Trump told the TOKEN2049 Singapore audience on October 7 that his family’s hospitality business is researching paying hotel staff in stablecoins. He also argued that crypto has effectively won its fight with the big banks and tied the sector’s next leg of growth to AI.

  • Eric Trump said the family business is researching stablecoin salaries for its global hotel workforce, according to live reports from the event.
  • No pilot, timeline, provider or choice of stablecoin was announced.
  • He framed bank adoption of crypto as a victory for the industry and said AI agents will transact through crypto wallets.

Eric Trump, executive vice president of the Trump Organization, used his TOKEN2049 Singapore session at Marina Bay Sands on Wednesday to make the case for stablecoins as payroll rails, according to a live report from ChainCatcher. He said the family’s business is researching salary payments in stablecoins for its hotel employees around the world.

Stablecoin payroll for hotel staff

Trump’s argument centered on settlement speed. He said traditional check clearing can take 24 to 36 hours, while workers want their money in their accounts right away. ChainCatcher, which relayed the remarks in translation, quoted him saying “the era of paying salaries with stablecoins has arrived.” A separate floor recap from SimpleSwap described the same remarks, adding that he pointed to athlete contracts denominated in bitcoin and to payment delays as part of the rationale.

No pilot, timeline, payroll provider or specific stablecoin was named, and CCS has not seen a company statement confirming a plan. For now this is exploration, not a launch.

Trump says crypto can declare victory over banks

Trump also told attendees the industry had beaten the big banks, pointing to the steady stream of lenders now embracing crypto, Benzinga reported. He said the room could “declare victory” because of institutional adoption. The tone marks a shift from his earlier warnings that banks risked becoming obsolete if they ignored digital assets. He also framed tokenization of real estate, art and music royalties as a way to open investments that have historically been reserved for the wealthy.

AI as the growth driver

Rather than crypto-specific catalysts, Trump tied the sector’s growth to artificial intelligence. ChainCatcher reported that he said digital assets will grow faster as AI grows, and that he expects AI agents to transact through crypto wallets rather than fiat rails. That echoed a theme running through day one, from Arthur Hayes pitching an AI agent chain to Dragonfly’s Haseeb Qureshi on what agents actually need from crypto.

The remarks landed on the same day World Liberty Financial, the Trump family-backed crypto venture, said it is working with Mesh to bring its USD1 stablecoin to online merchants.

The CCS read. Payroll is one of the clearest real-world tests for stablecoins, and it is a hard one. A large hotel operator moving even part of its wages onchain would need answers on employee consent, local wage laws that often require payment in legal tender, tax withholding, and cash-out options for staff across many countries. Those frictions are why stablecoin payroll has so far been concentrated among contractors and crypto-native firms. A Trump-family business exploring the idea also raises obvious conflict-of-interest questions given the family’s ties to World Liberty Financial and USD1, and any move would be watched closely in Washington. For institutions, the signal is less about hotels than about positioning: the industry’s most politically connected voices are now selling stablecoins as everyday payment plumbing rather than a trading tool.

Watch for any formal statement from the Trump Organization on a payroll pilot, and whether USD1 is the rail it picks. Follow all our TOKEN2049 coverage, and read our report on how World Liberty taps Mesh to bring USD1 to online merchants.

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Crypto Coin Show
Events

Gate unveils Gate Money, one account for crypto, stocks and payments

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Exchange NewsCrypto Coin Show News Team·October 7, 2026·3 min read

Gate founder and CEO Dr. Han used his TOKEN2049 Singapore keynote on October 7 to launch Gate Money, a single account that combines digital assets, stocks, payments and yield products. The exchange is pitching it as one gateway for a user base it puts at more than 61 million people.

  • Gate Money puts crypto, stock trading, card payments and asset management in one account, switched on inside the Gate app.
  • Gate says eligible balances such as USDT can earn up to 3.6% with no lock-up period.
  • The launch leans on Gate’s license stack, including MiCA and PSD2 in Malta and a full VARA license in Dubai.

Gate announced Gate Money on Wednesday, with Dr. Han unveiling the product from the stage at TOKEN2049 Singapore at Marina Bay Sands, according to the company’s press release. The service is built around the tagline “One Gate, Everything Money” and lets users hold, receive, transfer, pay, exchange and earn on their assets from a single balance.

One account for crypto, stocks and spending

Gate says the platform supports trading across more than 5,300 digital assets and more than 12,800 stock assets. The release does not say whether those stock assets are tokenized instruments or traditional equities, a distinction that matters for custody and investor protection. On the spending side, the Gate Card handles online and offline purchases in fiat or digital assets and works with Apple Pay and Google Pay. In some countries, users also get ATM withdrawals and local QR-code payments.

Users activate Gate Money with a single click in version 8.39.0 of the Gate app, according to the company.

Yield on idle balances is the hook

The headline feature for retail users is yield. Gate says eligible balances, with USDT given as the example, can earn up to 3.6% without a lock-up period. The release does not explain how that yield is generated, and the figure is presented as a ceiling rather than a guaranteed return. Yield on stablecoin balances remains a contested area for regulators in several markets, including the United States, where the GENIUS Act bars stablecoin issuers themselves from paying interest to holders.

Licenses do the heavy lifting

Gate’s pitch rests on its regulatory footprint. The company says its entities hold a MiCA crypto-asset service provider license and a PSD2 payment institution license in Malta, a full virtual asset service provider license from VARA in Dubai, and an AUSTRAC registration as a digital currency exchange provider in Australia. It also runs local entities in markets including Japan and says it covers 81 regulated jurisdictions in total. The release adds that Gate may restrict or prohibit certain services in specific jurisdictions, so the product will not look the same everywhere.

The CCS read. Gate Money is the latest sign that large exchanges want to look like neobanks rather than trading venues. Bundling stablecoin yield, stock access and a payment card into one balance is a retention play: the more a user saves and spends inside one app, the less likely those funds are to leave. For institutions, the more important detail is the licensing map. A MiCA CASP license plus a PSD2 payment license in Malta gives Gate a passportable base in the EU, which is what turns a keynote slogan into something that can scale under supervision. The open questions are where the yield comes from and how the stock leg is structured. Both will draw regulatory scrutiny as more venues converge on the same super-app model, including OKX, which is pushing into tokenized equities alongside ICE.

Watch for Gate to publish the terms behind the 3.6% rate and to clarify which regions get stock trading versus card and QR payments. Day two runs tomorrow at Marina Bay Sands; follow all our TOKEN2049 coverage, and see our report on how ICE and OKX are seeking SEC approval for round-the-clock tokenized stock trading.

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Ledger x Morpho Crypto Loan announcement graphic
Bitcoin

Ledger adds Morpho-powered bitcoin loans to its wallet at TOKEN2049

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DeFiCrypto Coin Show News Team·October 7, 2026·4 min read

Ledger used TOKEN2049 Singapore on October 7 to launch Crypto Loan, a feature inside Ledger Wallet that lets holders borrow USDC or USDT against wrapped bitcoin. The loans run on Morpho’s lending markets through an integration with Yield.xyz, and every step is signed on the user’s own hardware device.

  • Ledger Wallet users can pledge cbBTC or wBTC as collateral and borrow USDC or USDT without moving assets to a custodian.
  • Morpho supplies the lending markets and Yield.xyz runs the loan flow and position monitoring inside the app.
  • It is the second Morpho-powered product in Ledger Wallet after its stablecoin Earn feature, and access is rolling out gradually to eligible users.

Hardware wallet maker Ledger announced the new Crypto Loan feature in its October Ledger Wallet release on the opening day of TOKEN2049 Singapore at Marina Bay Sands. Morpho confirmed the integration in a post on its own blog the same day, describing it as a way for self-custody users to borrow stablecoins against their bitcoin directly in the app.

Ledger brings bitcoin-backed borrowing into the wallet

The product targets a familiar problem for long-term bitcoin holders: needing cash without selling. Users deposit wrapped bitcoin, either Coinbase’s cbBTC or wBTC, as collateral and borrow dollar stablecoins against it. According to Ledger, users can simulate a loan before opening it, then track their loan-to-value ratio, add collateral or repay from the same screen.

Ledger says the rollout is gradual for eligible users, and that crypto transaction services come from third-party providers that may not be available in every jurisdiction. Reporting from crypto.news adds that direct access to Morpho is open to all users from October 7.

Morpho and Yield.xyz do the plumbing

Morpho provides the onchain credit markets where the loans actually live, while Yield.xyz handles the loan flow and monitoring that sits inside Ledger Wallet. Borrowing is noncustodial: Morpho says users keep control of their positions and can repay or withdraw collateral at any time as long as the position stays healthy.

Morpho co-founder Paul Frambot framed the launch as a pairing with Ledger Earn, the stablecoin yield product Ledger already runs on Morpho. In his words, the two together create “a powerful liquidity flywheel,” since stablecoins that Ledger users supply through Earn can fund loans taken by other Ledger users.

Self-custody is the selling point, and the risks stay with the user

Every loan action requires Clear Signing on the Ledger device’s secure screen, and private keys stay offline throughout. That is the pitch against centralized lenders, where borrowers hand collateral to a company. The trade-off is that the user carries the market risk directly. Interest rates are variable and set by utilization in the underlying Morpho markets, and positions can be liquidated if collateral value falls too far.

Ledger also used the release to unveil a limited Nano Gen5 Spurs Edition with the San Antonio Spurs, capped at 250 units.

The CCS read. Bitcoin-backed credit is moving from lender balance sheets onto open protocols, and Morpho is becoming the default rail. Coinbase has offered Morpho-powered bitcoin loans since early 2025, and Ledger now brings the same market structure to users who refuse to give up their keys. For institutions, the signal is distribution: Morpho now sits behind both the largest US exchange and the best-known hardware wallet brand, which deepens liquidity in its BTC markets and tightens the link between wrapped bitcoin supply and stablecoin demand. The open question is risk management at retail scale. Variable rates and automatic liquidations behave very differently from a fixed-term bank loan, and a sharp bitcoin drawdown like the one markets saw this week is exactly when that difference shows up.

Watch for how quickly Ledger widens eligibility, whether native bitcoin collateral follows the wrapped versions, and how Morpho’s cbBTC and wBTC markets handle utilization as new borrowers arrive. For context on institutional borrowing on the same protocol, see our report on Circle enabling institutional bitcoin borrowing via Morpho, and follow all our TOKEN2049 coverage.

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Eric Trump, co-founder of World Liberty Financial, speaking on stage at the Consensus 2025 conference
Blockchain

World Liberty taps Mesh to bring USD1 to online merchants

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StablecoinsCrypto Coin Show News Team·October 7, 2026·3 min read

World Liberty Financial executives said on a TOKEN2049 Singapore stablecoin panel on October 7 that payments firm Mesh will let USD1 holders spend the stablecoin across its merchant network this quarter. On the same day, WLFI co-founder Eric Trump told the conference that crypto had beaten the big banks.

  • Mesh will integrate USD1 across its merchant network in the fourth quarter, according to WLFI and Mesh executives on the TOKEN2049 panel.
  • WLFI says it wants to bring the same payments technology to large Web2 companies, but named no merchants, volumes or launch dates.
  • BitGo issues USD1 today; WLFI co-founder Zak Folkman said the firm’s conditional OCC trust charter would let it take over issuance.

World Liberty Financial (WLFI), the crypto venture backed by the Trump family, used a stablecoin panel at TOKEN2049 Singapore on Wednesday to announce that payments infrastructure company Mesh will support its USD1 stablecoin for online merchant payments, Cointelegraph reported. WLFI chief executive Zach Witkoff and co-founder Zak Folkman shared the stage with Mesh co-founder and CEO Bam Azizi, who said USD1 holders will be able to spend the token inside Mesh’s merchant network. CCS did not find a formal press release from either company at publication time, so the details below rely on panel reporting from Cointelegraph, ChainCatcher and Cryptometer.

Mesh integration is scheduled for the fourth quarter

According to those reports, the USD1 integration is planned for the current quarter, which ends in December. Mesh runs a crypto payments network that connects wallets and exchange accounts to merchant checkouts. Neither company named the merchants that will accept USD1 first, and no transaction or volume targets were disclosed.

Folkman said WLFI plans to take the same technology to some of the largest Web2 businesses in the market, again without naming any. Crypto Briefing reported that the broader push is aimed at platforms that pay gig workers, rideshare drivers and content creators, and that it builds on WLFI’s AgentPay SDK for AI agent payments, launched in March, and an October 1 memorandum of understanding with MOA Protocol covering remittances and payments.

BitGo issues USD1 today, but WLFI wants that job

USD1 is currently issued by BitGo and is backed by cash, US government money market funds and other cash equivalents. Its market capitalization was about $4.45 billion according to CoinGecko data cited by Cointelegraph. In August, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency conditionally approved WLFI’s application to set up a national trust bank.

Folkman told the panel the charter changes who issues the token. “With this trust charter, we’ll be able to take on that responsibility ourselves,” he said, per Cointelegraph. The approval has drawn criticism from Senator Elizabeth Warren over potential conflicts of interest tied to the president’s family, and she and colleagues introduced the Ending Presidential Corruption in Banking Act in response. The OCC has said its leadership and staff followed their statutory duties and ethical obligations.

Eric Trump tells the room crypto beat the banks

Eric Trump, a WLFI co-founder, argued from the TOKEN2049 stage that banks now racing to adopt digital assets amounted to a win for the industry, according to Bloomberg reporting cited by Benzinga. “I think today we could all declare victory,” he said. Trump also tied crypto’s next leg of growth to AI adoption rather than to crypto-specific catalysts.

He said the family’s hospitality business, which employs tens of thousands of people worldwide, is exploring paying salaries in stablecoins, according to accounts from ChainCatcher and SimpleSwap’s floor recap. He pointed to the 24 to 36 hours it takes a check to clear as the problem stablecoin payroll would solve, and noted that athletes are increasingly negotiating contracts in Bitcoin.

The CCS read. Payments are where stablecoins have to prove themselves beyond trading collateral and exchange settlement. A Mesh integration gives USD1 a merchant-facing route that does not depend on WLFI’s own app, which matters more than another exchange listing. But this is an announcement without the numbers institutions look for: no named merchants, no volume figures and no launch date more precise than the quarter. The bigger structural variable is the trust charter. If WLFI becomes its own issuer, USD1’s reserves, attestations and redemptions would sit inside a federally supervised entity tied to the sitting president’s family, which keeps political and conflict-of-interest scrutiny in play for any bank, payments firm or merchant considering the token.

What to watch: the first merchant names and live transaction data from Mesh, any final OCC sign-off on the WLFI trust bank, and whether USD1 supply moves after the panel. Follow all our TOKEN2049 coverage, and read our earlier look at how OCC approvals still leave crypto-friendly banks facing further review.

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