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Chainalysis: South Korea leads East Asia crypto economy with $449.1B
Retail traders piling into AI tokens pushed South Korea's crypto activity up 12.3% while the wider region slightly contracted
South Korea just posted the kind of year most crypto markets would envy during a downturn. According to Chainalysis, the country recorded $449.1 billion in crypto activity between July 2025 and June 2026, the largest of any East Asian market.
That figure is up 12.3% period-over-period. Meanwhile, the rest of the region spent the same stretch going slightly backwards.
The findings come from the blockchain analytics firm’s East Asia Crypto Adoption Report, released on October 5, 2026.
Retail traders and the AI token rush
Chainalysis attributes most of South Korea’s growth to retail trading on centralized exchanges.
What those investors were buying is the more interesting part. AI-themed tokens became the dominant force in Korean trading, overtaking assets like XRP that had previously been crowd favorites.
By June 2026, AI tokens held the largest share of trading volume in the country. The leaderboard looked like this:
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- Worldcoin (WLD): $7.41 billion in volume
- SAHARA: $3.2 billion
- VIRTUAL: $2.7 billion
The enthusiasm is notably concentrated. AI-themed trading volume denominated in Korean won was 19.5 times higher than comparable volume in Japanese yen, according to the report.
A region heading in different directions
East Asia’s total crypto economy reached approximately $1.2 trillion over the period, reflecting a minor contraction amid what the report describes as an ongoing global crypto bear market.
Hong Kong took the institutional route. Its institutional platforms grew 87% year-over-year and captured 16% of service inflows.
Japan moved toward decentralized finance. Activity on decentralized exchanges, or DEXs, rose 36%, pushing the DEX share of activity to 34.5%.
China delivered perhaps the most dramatic statistic in the report. The number of peer-to-peer stablecoin wallets grew 43 times from Q1 2024 to Q2 2026.
Why the institutional gap matters
For all the retail energy in South Korea, the institutional side remains cautious. Chainalysis notes that Korean banks are exploring stablecoins and tokenization but have not yet committed substantial investment.