Singapore’s crypto economy grew 55.4 percent to 284 billion USD in the year ended June 2026, reclaiming its spot as the largest crypto economy in Central and Southern Asia plus Oceania while the broader region shrank, according to new Chainalysis data.
The contrast is stark: the CSAO crypto economy contracted 6.8 percent over the same period, yet the city-state posted some of the strongest growth of any major jurisdiction tracked by the blockchain analytics firm. Singapore did not just grow against a declining regional backdrop — it grew because of a deliberate regulatory strategy that traded speculative volume for institutional depth.
The engine of the expansion was institutional platform activity, which surged 94 percent to 60 billion USD. Chainalysis was careful about what that number actually represents, noting the growth was “very concentrated and marked by mostly high-volume activity by existing platforms rather than the dynamic entry of new services.” A small number of market makers, over-the-counter trading firms and institutional brokerages accounted for the bulk of the increase — Singapore’s crypto economy is becoming a wholesale market, not a retail one.
The MAS trade-off
The findings land at a moment when Singapore’s regulatory posture is under fresh scrutiny. In 2025, the Monetary Authority of Singapore required local crypto firms serving overseas clients to obtain a license or exit the market entirely. StraitsX CEO Tianwei Liu said the move reduced speculative activity while leaving behind a more durable user base — banks and large corporates using blockchain infrastructure in production rather than tourists chasing leveraged punts.
At the same time, MAS has pushed forward on tokenization and settlement. Its BLOOM program supports trials using regulated stablecoins and tokenized bank money, and Ripple joined the initiative in March to test cross-border trade settlement using its RLUSD stablecoin. The two-track approach — squeeze the speculative fringe, court the institutional core — is now visibly reflected in the on-chain data.
The P2P story next door
While Singapore dominated the institutional column, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam drove a very different kind of growth: small-value peer-to-peer transfers. The three countries recorded a combined 5.4 million P2P transfers — domestic and cross-border — worth less than 10,000 USD each during the reporting period. That represents 14.4 percent of the global total for such transfers, despite the three markets accounting for just 2.5 percent of the global crypto economy.
The profile of that activity is unmistakably remittance-driven. More than four in five domestic P2P transfers across the three markets were below 1,000 USD, with an average transfer size of 618 USD versus 1,210 USD across the rest of the world. In the Philippines, personal remittances were equivalent to 8.5 percent of GDP in 2025, and PDAX CEO Nichel Gaba estimated that 5 to 10 percent of inbound remittances are already settled using stablecoins, with major remittance companies actively pursuing stablecoin settlement initiatives. The Bank of the Philippine Islands, for its part, revealed plans in July for a stablecoin settlement pilot aimed at cutting the cost and processing time of overseas payments to Filipino freelancers and remote workers.
Vietnam’s P2P market thrives partly out of necessity: because the Vietnamese dong is not widely supported in direct trading pairs, peer-to-peer channels serve as a critical fiat gateway between local bank accounts and the offshore exchanges where most Vietnamese traders custody their assets. Thailand’s Securities and Exchange Commission separately reported a significant increase in the volume and value of stablecoin transactions in September, particularly USDT.
Stablecoins cross every border
The through-line of the report is stablecoin adoption. Chainalysis found that cross-border stablecoin activity exceeded domestic activity in every single market it analyzed, with cross-border flows across the region running 3.2 times larger than domestic ones. Thailand and Vietnam hosted sizable domestic stablecoin markets — 10.4 billion USD and 6.9 billion USD respectively — but even there, the cross-border channel dwarfed local usage.
“Stablecoins account for a growing share in all three,” Chainalysis told Cointelegraph. “Plausibly, the drivers of this adoption link to ease of use, speed and low transfer costs.”
The regional picture that emerges is a two-speed crypto economy: an institutional, regulation-shaped boom in Singapore, and a grassroots, remittance-shaped boom everywhere else — with stablecoins as the common rail under both.
Price snapshot at publication (CoinGecko): BTC 84,524 USD — ETH 2,702.58 USD — SOL 120.97 USD.
55.4% growth to 284B while the whole CSAO region shrank 6.8%. singapore really said regulatory clarity pays
MAS spent years scaring off the retail casinos and this is what stuck. boring whitelist money wins
284b while the whole region shrank 6.8 percent. MAS kicking out the leverage tourists and keeping the banks turned out fine
keeping the banks while kicking out the leverage tourists looks smarter every quarter. MAS patience actually paid
Growth being mostly existing platforms trading more volume is less impressive than the headline suggests. Same market makers, bigger tickets
same market makers with bigger tickets is still fine by me when the whole region shrank 6.8 percent. directionally singapore won
Institutional flows up 94% to 60B and Chainalysis cautions it is concentrated. That is the entire thesis, a handful of serious firms, no tourist money.
everyone around them shrinking while they absorb the volume, classic singapore
BLOOM trials with tokenized bank money and ripple pushing rlUSD through it. singapore is building the settlement rails everyone else is still holding hearings about
No hype tweets, just licenses and pilots. Half the industry could copy that playbook instead of arguing on X all day