Daniel Malinovski at the Stablecoin Soiree, Token2049

Daniel Malinovski, co-founder of Simplicity Group, moderated at the Stablecoin Soirée, part of Stablecoin Summit 2025 during Token2049 week in Singapore on 2 October 2025.

Daniel moderated alongside Michael Harding of Foundation Ventures. The confirmed speakers were John Cahill, COO Asia at Galaxy, Evan Auyang, Group President at Animoca Brands, Adrian Fritz, VP and Global Head of Research at 21Shares, and Harrison Frye, co-founder and Chief Growth Officer at Acquire.Fi, which hosted the event with Interlace among the partners.

Token2049 Singapore drew around 25,000 attendees in 2025, with more than a thousand side events across the week.

Why stablecoins had their own summit

Stablecoins moved from plumbing to product over the preceding two years, and the shift changed who was in the room. The panel spanned an institutional trading desk, a research house, a consumer platform and an acquisitions firm, which is roughly the set of parties that now have a commercial stake in how a dollar moves on-chain.

The distinction the discussion kept coming back to is the one between holding a stablecoin and using one. A stablecoin held for yield competes with money market funds and is priced accordingly, whereas a stablecoin used for settlement competes with correspondent banking on speed and cost. Those two products need different reserve structures, different distribution and different regulatory postures, and issuers that try to be both tend to be beaten on each front by someone doing one.

Moderating rather than pitching

Simplicity Group works with funded businesses on go-to-market and token design, and moderation is a deliberate part of how the firm shows up at events like this. A moderator's job is to get four people with genuinely different incentives to say something specific, which is a more useful contribution at an invitation-only summit than another product pitch.

Stablecoin Summit 2025 ran during Token2049 week in Singapore, on 2 October.