India has held on to its position as Central and Southeast Asia and Oceania’s largest market for centralized crypto exchange inflows, receiving 88.4 billion USD through CEX platforms during the latest reporting period, according to new Chainalysis data. The lead over regional rivals is narrow but symbolically potent: Singapore followed at 82.3 billion USD, with Australia at 79.3 billion USD and Vietnam at 69.8 billion USD.
The ranking comes with an uncomfortable footnote. India’s overall crypto economy contracted 14.7 percent to 135 billion USD between July 2025 and June 2026, one of the larger declines recorded across the region during the global bear market. India ranked third by total crypto activity in CSAO, behind Singapore at 284 billion USD and Australia at 173.1 billion USD. Yet when the lens is narrowed to centralized exchange activity specifically, India jumps to the front of the pack.
Investment, Not Payments, Drives Indian Crypto
Chainalysis found that investment remains the dominant use case for digital assets in India, with users primarily buying, holding and selling rather than spending. CoinSwitch co-founder Ashish Singhal told the analytics firm that crypto in India is predominantly being used as an investable asset. Crucially, he said, the investor base is maturing beyond the young retail traders traditionally associated with the market, with growing participation from users aged 35 and above, including some carrying larger portfolios.
Mudrex chief executive Edul Patel described a parallel shift in mindset, saying many Indian users are moving from flip to accumulate. In practice that means crypto is increasingly held alongside equities, gold and mutual funds as a diversifying asset class rather than traded opportunistically. For a market that global headlines often reduce to speculation, the demographic and behavioral data point toward something that looks more like household allocation.
Centralized exchange inflows in India have moved unevenly across the years but netted out even with the region. Chainalysis measured the trend with a relative growth index that started at 100 in the third quarter of 2021 and ended at the same level in the latest period, meaning periods of outperformance and lagging balanced out over the full window.
The Offshore Leak
The most striking anomaly in the Indian data is where the trading actually happens. Domestic exchanges accounted for roughly 7 percent of Indian exchange volume before their share collapsed in mid-2022, and the figure has stayed depressed ever since. In the latest data, domestic platforms captured just 0.7 percent of Indian exchange volume. Across the rest of CSAO, domestic platforms process an average of around 7 percent of local volume, a tenfold gap.
Singhal pointed at the tax system as the main culprit. India introduced its 1 percent tax deducted at source on crypto transactions in 2022, and compliant domestic exchanges levy it on every qualifying trade while offshore exchanges serving Indian users often do not. Faced with a built-in cost disadvantage, volume migrated to platforms outside the reach of Indian tax collection.
Regulators have noticed and are pushing back. In September, the Financial Intelligence Unit issued non-compliance notices to 15 offshore crypto platforms and sought action to remove their apps and URLs in India, a list that reportedly included Weex, Blofin, WOO X and WhiteBIT. Virtual digital asset providers serving Indian customers are required to register with FIU-IND as reporting entities, and the notices are part of a broader effort to force offshore venues into the compliance perimeter.
The heavier policy backdrop extends beyond enforcement. India currently taxes cryptocurrency gains at a flat 30 percent with limited offset provisions, while qualifying virtual digital asset transactions carry the 1 percent TDS. The Reserve Bank of India has maintained its long-standing cautious stance on crypto even as tax authorities have raised concerns about transactions flowing through offshore exchanges, private wallets and peer-to-peer channels.
A Regional Counterpoint
The Indian numbers land alongside a very different story in Singapore. The same Chainalysis reporting placed Singapore as the region’s largest crypto economy at 284 billion USD in activity, with growth that Chainalysis has previously attributed overwhelmingly to institutional and larger transaction flows rather than retail speculation. The city-state’s regulatory framework, which moved to a license-or-exit model for digital asset service providers, has coincided with a market skewed toward professional participants.
India presents the inverse profile: enormous retail-driven exchange activity, a shrinking headline economy, and a government whose tax design inadvertently routed most trading offshore. Both countries end up as top-tier crypto markets, but through completely different mechanisms.
What It Means Going Forward
The tension in the Indian data is not hard to see. A 14.7 percent contraction in total crypto activity alongside record-setting CEX inflows suggests concentration rather than decline: fewer participants may be moving more value through exchanges, or the buy-and-hold cohort is consolidating while transactional usage fades. The 0.7 percent domestic exchange share is the number most likely to move next, either upward if the FIU enforcement campaign forces offshore venues to register and collect the TDS, or further down if users migrate to wallets and peer-to-peer channels beyond easy regulatory reach.
For the broader region, India’s grip on the CEX inflow crown despite a shrinking economy is a reminder that adoption metrics cut both ways. Access to exchanges is a leading indicator of engagement, but the composition of that engagement, who trades, on which venues, and under what tax regime, determines how much of the activity any country actually captures. India has the demand. The policy question is whether it will keep exporting the volume.
Price snapshot at publication (Binance, 17:01 UTC, Oct. 1, 2026): BTC 84,226 USD, ETH 2,682.50 USD, SOL 117.25 USD.
the 35 and up cohort stat is the real story. uncles holding btc next to gold and mutual funds was not on my bingo card
^ my father in pune finally asked me about btc last month. that edul patel quote about accumulate instead of flip matches what i see
88.4 billion in inflows while the overall crypto economy shrank 14.7 percent. The tax regime chases people away from CEXs and India still tops the region. That says a lot about how deep demand actually runs.
The 35 and older cohort growing is the part nobody prices in. My relatives now ask me about index funds and BTC in the same sentence.
economy shrank 14.7 percent to 135B and still leads CEX inflows. says more about how rough the bear was on everyone else in CSAO
Gap between India at 88.4 and Singapore at 82.3 is barely 6 billion. One TDS rule change and that ranking flips next report.