Polymarket's founder and CEO Shayne Coplan set the rumor mill spinning last week by hinting at news for the prediction market, stoking hopes tied to executive chatter back in 2025 about a potential cryptocurrency. On stage at Token2049 in Singapore, his remarks were far broader: "I truly believe in the idea for obviously on-chain assets." The crowd on social feeds did not love it. As one frustrated Polymarket trader put it, "We've had enough token teasing to last a decade, stop playing with your audience." Polymarket declined to comment.
In Singapore Coplan also said he believes in blockchain-based financial assets across formats, including tokens and equity. "That, to me, has immense staying power," he said, "and it's how the idea of stocks should work."
The splashy token playbook is losing its shine. According to CoinGecko, over the period from January 2025 to February 2026, under 10% of tokens listed on the majority of top exchanges finished in the green. Acheron Trading's analysis shows new monthly listings on leading venues in late 2025 fell back to levels last seen in 2023.
That lines up with caution from practitioners. Aaron Brogan, an attorney whose firm counsels crypto and other emerging startups, said, "We've advised for a long time that token launches are really risky." "When that market was frothy, it maybe made sense." Outside of Bitcoin, froth has thinned.
The broader backdrop is still shaky. Twelve months after a single day wiped out a record $19 billion in leveraged positions, Bitcoin is still more than 30% below its peak. Rallies keep stalling, and traders have been hesitant to rebuild the kind of leverage that once turbocharged crypto surges.
Token launches are where crypto projects meet real investor scrutiny. Market Briefs covers that market free every morning.
Some teams are retooling their cap tables. Across Protocol, which pitches itself as a way to move assets across different blockchains, is retiring its cryptocurrency and offering holders the option to take equity. Centrifuge, which focuses on tokenizing real-world assets, is likewise swapping its cryptocurrency for equity.
Why the switch? "So many projects either have a token because it was regulatory arbitrage to raise money back in the day, or have a token because there used to be governance or utility for the token," said Bhaji Illuminati, CEO of Centrifuge. "And now, as the industry and the companies have evolved, it doesn't make sense."
Illuminati added that Centrifuge's governance token has become a headache. As the company courts financial institutions that want to put assets in blockchain wrappers, deals have slipped away over concerns that a faceless community of token holders could quickly change course. Centrifuge has also turned away investor money because institutions enforce stringent policies on holding tokens. "The market is getting more disciplined about when a token actually makes sense," she said.
That mirrors a wider industry tilt toward structures that big players can hold and underwrite.
Meanwhile, real-world asset rails are getting busier. Alpaca says it has processed roughly $6 billion year to date for instantaneous mints and redemptions connecting tokenized stocks and the underlying shares.
For your money, the signal is simple enough: splashy coin launches are cooling, governance tokens are under more scrutiny, and equity or tokenized claims on real assets are getting the institutional nod. If you care about where your dollars end up, watch which crypto projects are building products that real customers and cautious gatekeepers will actually hold.
Swapping a token plan for equity says a lot about the model. Get the free Market Briefs daily newsletter and follow it.
