Executives cited ETF flows, DAT growth and major trading firms entering crypto. Tokenization and instant settlement could blur the line between traditional and decentralized markets. Low-latency design and composable tooling aim to power AI-driven and tokenized financial use cases. Institutional interest in crypto is accelerating even as markets fluctuate, according to Sui executives at Consensus Hong Kong 2026.
“Post the Genius Act, we’ve seen so much more institutional demand and awareness for what the promise of crypto could deliver,” he said, particularly around tokenization and stablecoins. “The market, despite all of the sentiment being low, has never been greater,” he said, citing record options volumes and the entrance of major firms such as Citadel and Jane Street into crypto markets. He described a long-term trend in which “the biggest institutions in finance in the world” are investing in infrastructure and talent to capture market share. Mysten Labs CEO Evan Cheng framed the next phase as convergence rather than competition between traditional finance and decentralized finance.
In his view, TradFi products often operate on “T+1 or T+whatever,” while DeFi is “T+0”—a “strictly better product” in settlement terms. The convergence, he suggested, will emerge through tokenization, enabling DeFi strategies layered on traditional exposure. “You acquire an asset and immediately you can collateralize and borrow against it,” Cheng said, enabling DeFi strategies layered on traditional exposure.
On whether ETFs compete with DeFi, Cheng said products will evolve. Institutional on-ramps may begin conservatively but could incorporate yield or other on-chain mechanics over time. Both executives emphasized infrastructure as Sui’s differentiator. Mackintosh described Sui as “a differentiated proposition” built by former Facebook engineers behind Libra, offering low latency and high throughput suited for emerging use cases such as “agentic commerce,” the intersection of AI and onchain transactions.
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