Singapore, Cointelegraph, Web3, Token2049

Token 2049 returned to Singapore on Oct. 1-2, turning the city-state into a lively crypto hub for two days. Industry leaders, influencers and community members gathered to follow the latest trends, exchange innovative ideas and spark collaborative discussions.

LONGITUDE, an exclusive side event that took place on the second day, stood out as a hot spot. Organized by Cointelegraph in collaboration with Unlimit, a global fintech leader in payment processing, LONGITUDE set the stage for some of the most influential voices in the crypto space. Discussions spanned the current conditions in the market, the growing relevance of interoperability and how to solve challenges plaguing the industry.

Leaders on stage

LONGITUDE kicked off with a fireside chat featuring Arthur Hayes, co-founder of BitMEX. Hayes dived deep into market cycles, liquidity and the increasing role of institutional capital in crypto.

According to Hayes, liquidity remains cyclical and heavily influenced by sentiment in the crypto market. Limited participation by institutional players continues to create volatility and constrain long-term capital formation. For Hayes, addressing these challenges requires building transparent, onchain financial instruments that mirror traditional asset management structures while also advancing regulatory clarity.

The second panel, titled “Beyond Bitcoin: Treasury Meta Evolves,” explored the current corporate treasury and governance models and how tokenization, automation and decentralized finance (DeFi) are transforming them. Meanwhile, Ethereum co-founder Joseph Lubin and writer Neal Stephenson continued discussions on a separate fireside chat. The two touched on decentralization as a cultural and technological movement, and what it will take for Web3 to achieve mainstream scale.

The day culminated in a powerhouse discussion, “Building Trillion-Dollar Infrastructure,” featuring Kirill Eves, founder and CEO of Unlimit; Stani Kulechov, founder and CEO of Aave Labs; Mert Mumtaz, co-founder and CEO of Helius; Sreeram Kannan, founder and CEO of EigenCloud and Marcos Viriato, co-founder and CEO of Parfin — developer of Rayls. The speakers envisioned a future built on scalable, compliant and interoperable systems, where fintech and Web3 converge to power the next trillion-dollar economies.

Tackling pressing challenges

LONGITUDE witnessed a thorough examination of some of the most pressing challenges facing the space, and solutions proposed to address them. Recognizing the widening gap between traditional finance infrastructure and decentralized systems, Eves emphasized the need for a hybrid infrastructure that can support both fiat and digital assets at scale.

Kulechov, Kannan and Viriato also identified three challenges that limit scalability and global adoption: fragmented protocols, high gas fees and poor crosschain interoperability. Kulechov suggested modular architectures capable of evolving without centralized dependencies, while Kannan highlighted trust-minimized bridges and offchain compute layers as the next frontier for achieving large-scale scalability.

Regulatory uncertainty was a hot topic as well. The speakers called for collaborative engagement with regulators rather than resistance, emphasizing that proactive dialogue can help shape workable policies and the establishment of standards for tokenized assets and DeFi operations.

Discussion revolving around struggles with usability and user experience highlighted Unlimit’s approach. Complex onboarding processes, limited fiat integration and poor user interfaces continue to deter new participants. To solve this, Unlimit embeds global payment infrastructures directly into Web3 ecosystems, making stablecoins and digital assets as seamless and accessible as traditional money.

Unlimit also recently launched Stable.com — a non-custodial stablecoin clearing house. Powered by Unlimit’s global fintech infrastructure — which supports more than a thousand payment methods and over 150 currencies — Stable.com allows users to exchange and off-ramp all major stablecoins with zero commission, making them practical, convenient and borderless.

A day of collaboration

As the sun set and the curtains were brought down, discussions turned to reviewing the event itself, on which Kirill Eves said:

“LONGITUDE captured exactly what this industry needs right now — collaboration, clarity and conviction. We’re proud to co-host a forum that’s shaping that conversation, and we look forward to expanding LONGITUDE into new regions and themes in 2026.”

LONGITUDE gathered the ecosystem’s most influential builders, investors and policymakers to tackle the same issues Unlimit is solving: trust, interoperability, regulation and scale. Over the next period, Unlimit plans to expand new markets and build on solutions to create a world where money moves freely, instantly and intelligently.

Find out more about Unlimit

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