Solana wants to position itself as the execution layer for “internet capital markets” in Asia, or places where users can issue, trade, borrow, lend and settle assets online, 24/7, without having to use a traditional stock exchange, bank or clearing house.
At least that was the position’s participants and panelists at Solana’s Accelerate APAC event in Hong Kong on Wednesday. Speakers struck a noticeably institutional tone, with panels and keynotes focusing less on hype cycles and more on payments, tokenization and the necessary plumbing to embed traditional finance at the conference, co-hosted with CoinDesk’s Consensus Hong Kong
Today’s agenda reflected this shift. Discussions ranged from SOL betting on exchange-traded funds (ETFs) and digital asset trusts to stablecoin rails, tokenized securities and regulated exchange-traded products.
Asset managers including Mirae Asset and ChinaAMC shared the stage with infrastructure players such as CME Group, Fireblocks and Cumberland, showing how closely the ecosystem is courting traditional financial firms.
Payments were also strong. Several sessions centered on payment rails, compatible stablecoin infrastructure, and cross-border use cases, with a clear emphasis on real-world implementation rather than speculative trading.
Infrastructure and artificial intelligence was another pillar. Talks from Alibaba Cloud and several crypto-native developers highlighted the growing overlap between blockchain execution layers and AI-powered applications, reinforcing Solana’s long-standing pitch around speed and scalability.
The overall mood of Hong Kong was simple and almost stubbornly consistent. Barley.
Not the “buidl” that pops up in bull markets as a vibe check, but the kind that pops up when prices are down 70% over a year, attention is low, and no one is pretending the last few months have been fun. But that was not the framework in which the event operated.
Panels kept circling back to the same practical questions: How do stablecoins work at scale, how do you onboard institutions without breaking compliance, and what metrics actually matter when selling onchain rails to asset managers and banks. How to make wallets feel less like science projects and how to build tokenization infrastructure that survives a regulator’s first serious review were also in focus
If anything, the downturn seemed to sharpen the messaging, with less talk about narratives and more about settlement, custody, payments, identity and the tedious operational details that determine whether “real adoption” is real or just a meme.
An important sentiment was not that Solana is immune to market cycles, but that the people who build it try to act as if the cycle can’t determine what matters.
