Summary
- Beneath regional decline, key growth stories emerged: Central & Southeast Asia and Oceania’s crypto economy contracted 6.8%, but this decline masks significant pockets of growth. Most major markets grew in either utility or financial activity, while several grew across both.
- Institutional adoption accelerated: The region’s two largest crypto economies, Singapore and Australia, saw their institutional activity expand. Singapore recorded the biggest increase, with institutional-platform activity rising 94%.
- Cross-border stablecoin and small-value P2P activity stood out: The value of cross-border stablecoin activity exceeded the value of domestic stablecoin activity throughout the region. And the Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam accounted for over 14% of all global small-value peer-to-peer transfers, despite representing just 2.5% of the global crypto economy.
- From adoption to integration: Experts pointed to regulation and infrastructure as key to the region’s next phase of crypto adoption, as businesses and individuals increasingly use digital assets for practical applications across the economy.
Central & Southeast Asia and Oceania (CSAO) — the sixth-largest region in our study — shows just how diverse crypto adoption can be. While the region’s overall crypto economy contracted 6.8% between July 1, 2025 and June 30, 2026, it recorded an uptick in many use cases, from tokenization to cross-border settlements. Most markets in the region grew in at least one area of crypto activity.
In Singapore and Australia, institutional participation gained ground. In the Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam, peer-to-peer (P2P) activity outperformed global trends. In India, crypto as a speculative asset remained strong. And across much of the region, stablecoins became a more popular tool for moving value across borders.
The region’s largest crypto economies
Singapore recorded the region’s largest measured economy, with $284 billion in crypto activity during the 2026 period, up 55.4% year-over-year.
Much of Singapore’s growth came from institutional-platform activity, which rose 94% to $60 billion. Much of this activity was concentrated among a small number of market makers, over-the-counter (OTC) trading firms, and institutional brokerages. But the financial center’s overall crypto growth was itself diverse, a 30% increase in flows into centralized exchanges (CEX) and a 69% increase in flows into decentralized exchanges (DEX).
Australia was the region’s second-largest digital assets economy at $173.1 billion. While overall activity fell 5.6%, largely from a major decline in DEX value flows, both CEX and institutional platform activity grew, pointing to continued market strength. Institutional flows were largely concentrated among custodian and OTC desks.
India experienced one of the region’s sharpest declines, with its crypto economy contracting by 14.7% during the global bear market. Even so, it remains a major market in absolute terms, recording $135 billion in economic activity during the 2026 period. Its CEX activity remained particularly strong, making it CSAO’s largest market by CEX inflow.
Beneath regional decline, pockets of growth
Crypto adoption is most commonly associated with financial activity, such as trading, staking and lending. We track this activity by watching where digital assets flow. If they’re moving into an exchange, then we classify those assets as being used in a financial way. The more financial activity we see happening in a country, the higher it scores on our financial index.
But we also measure crypto adoption by utility: how often, and in what ways, digital assets support day-to-day life. Activities such as P2P payments and cross-border remittances are indicative of utility; the more of these activities we see in a given country, the higher it ranks in our utility index.
Singapore grew across both indexes, supported by its strong overall crypto economy growth and strong institutional adoption.
Australia also grew across both indexes, in spite of its year-over-year contraction. This was in large part thanks to institutional-platform activity increasing 33.3% to $39.92 billion, driven by strong inflows into custodians, OTC desks, and market-making firms.
Pakistan’s standout 736% growth on utility is best understood as a rally off a very shallow base. In the 2025 period, the country recorded only $69 million of utility activity (domestic P2P and cross-border inflows), a tiny figure on a global scale. From this small base Pakistan grew to $351 million in the 2026 period. Still, this growth is notable given the country has only just relaxed onerous restrictions on the local crypto industry. In April 2026, Pakistan dropped a seven-year ban that prohibited the country’s banks from working with crypto companies.
The Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam all grew in their utility functions thanks to growing P2P activity, with the countries accounting for 14.4% of the global total of small-value P2P transfers during the 2026 period.
Stablecoins are becoming a key cross-border tool
We looked more closely at how crypto is being used for practical purposes across the region. One finding stands out: stablecoins are most prominent when moving value across borders. In every market we analyzed, cross-border stablecoin activity exceeded domestic activity.
Malaysia shows the widest gap, with cross-border activity 29.5 times larger than domestic activity. Across CSAO overall, the comparable ratio is 3.2X.
Part of this is a result of well-developed financial systems. Many countries in the region have digital payment rails that work quickly and efficiently domestically, obviating the need for a solution like stablecoins. Malaysia is one such country, said David Low, CEO of Malaysian exchange Hata: “Stablecoins have a relatively weak value proposition for everyday domestic payments. Where the opportunity becomes much more interesting is cross-border settlement.”
Remittances are driving this growth in places like the Phillipines, said Nichel Gaba, Founder and CEO at the Philippine Digital Asset Exchange (PDAX). With a huge diaspora population sending funds home, the Philippines hosts the fourth-largest remittance market worldwide — and “probably around 5-10% of inbound remittances are being settled with stablecoins,” he said.
“All the major remittance companies have initiatives to do stablecoin settlement into the Philippines,” he said.
CSAO is seeing a surge of stablecoin activity for cross-border business payments, according to experts we spoke to in Australia, Malaysia, and the regional leader, Singapore.
Business-to-business cross-border stablecoin payments are a “deployed reality” in this $284 billion crypto economy, said Srivatsan Tirumalai, ex-executive director, Architecture and Engineering at Singapore-based financial services group UOB. Corporate treasuries and regional merchants are bypassing delays, cutting fees, and side-stepping banking inefficiencies by making payments in “regulated stablecoins” that instantly settle, he said.
Some countries in Central & Southeast Asia and Oceania do host multibillion-dollar domestic stablecoin economies; for example, Thailand with $10.4 billion, and Vietnam with $6.9 billion. But their cross-border markets were 50-100%+ larger than their domestic scenes.
The Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam beat global P2P growth
While stablecoins offer a strong value proposition for cross-border payments and settlements across the region, some markets are seeing growing traction for another practical need: smaller-value transfers between individuals, both within and across borders.
Together, the Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam recorded 5.4 million total small-value P2P transfers (under $10,000) during the 2026 period, 14.4% of the global total, despite the trio representing just 2.5% of the world’s crypto economy.
This activity came through small-dollar payments. More than four in five of the domestic transfers in these three countries were under $1,000, with an average transfer size of $618, compared with $1,210 across the rest of the world.
Institutional activity is gaining ground, opening new use cases
Institutional activity is also becoming an increasingly important part of the region’s crypto economy.
For one, institutional platforms across the region (which we define as market makers, prime brokers, OTC desks, custodians, and institutional-only exchanges) processed $152.3 billion in the reporting period, up 40% year-over-year. Moreover, the share of institutional-platform activity across all regional activity also rose to 18.9% by the end of Q2 2026.
Banks, asset managers, and other financial institutions are exploring how digital assets and blockchain infrastructure can fit into their market offerings and financial infrastructure. Singapore and Australia are leading this conversation in the region, according to the experts we spoke to.
In Australia, “The defining shift in 2026 is that crypto stopped being a retail story. 2025 was about who was buying. 2026 is about what the asset is being used for — as collateral, as settlement, as a tokenised instrument,” said Nicolas Gilardi, head of risk and compliance at the Australian exchange BTC Markets.
And in Singapore, “the narrative has broadened beyond trading returns to include payments, treasury management, and market infrastructure,” notes Daniel Yang, head of compliance at the Singapore-based trading firm QCP Group.
Other markets are beginning to explore these opportunities as well, although institutional engagement remains nascent. In markets such as Malaysia, “the most important change over the past 12 months is that the conversation among traditional financial institutions has moved from ‘Should we be involved in digital assets?’ to ‘How should we participate?’” said Low, the Hata CEO.
Experts from Indonesia and Thailand noted similar shifts. William Sutanto, CEO of Indonesian exchange Indodax, said engagement between crypto businesses and traditional financial institutions was increasing, while James Liew, senior product manager at blockchain technology provider Ascend Bit, pointed to a shift toward “more real use cases around real-world assets and investment tokens.”
Australia’s crypto market is broadening
Australia’s institutional-platform growth outpaced both regional and global growth.
Institutional platforms in Australia received $40 billion in inflows during the 2026 period, accounting for 24.8% of all service inflows in Australia. Market makers accounted for 35% of these institutional inflows, while prime brokers and OTC desks drove another 19%. Custody and collateral providers made up 26%.
BTC Markets’ Gilardi credits a boom in products palatable to traditional investors with driving the country’s recent growth, including retirement accounts and regulated wrappers, like ETFs.
Tokenization is also gaining attention. Project Acacia, a joint initiative of the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) and Digital Finance Cooperative Research Centre, has been exploring how digital money and tokenized assets can be used across wholesale financial market use cases.
And new regulatory measures have helped increase confidence among institutional actors, as noted by Amy-Rose Goodey, CEO of the Digital Economy Council of Australia, a national body representing the country’s digital economy development.
Goodey noted two particular frameworks: the country’s 2026 expanded AML/CFT regime, which applies to a broader set of providers, including crypto-to-crypto exchange and custody providers, and the Australian Securities and Investments Commission’s licensing regime for digital asset platforms and tokenized custody platforms, scheduled to begin in 2027.
But institutional level adoption is not all that Australia is seeing. The country saw a strong cross-border economy, including for small cross-border transfers.
Stablecoins are increasingly being used for smaller and medium-sized outbound transfers in the country, mirroring the broader regional shift toward stablecoins for cross-border payments.
Our data show that stablecoin transfer counts rose from roughly 100,000 in 2021–22 to about 2 million in 2025–26. Bitcoin transfers, meanwhile, fell from their 2023–24 peak to just over 1 million. Stablecoin cross-border value also rose, reaching slightly more than $3 billion in 2025–26.
These assets are flowing to different continents altogether. Australian BTC flows are more concentrated in North America, while its stablecoin flows are more concentrated in Eastern Asia, as shown below.
This may reflect Bitcoin’s stronger ties to North American liquidity and investment markets, while stablecoins are more closely linked to Asian payment, settlement, and trading corridors. North America’s growing role as a BTC hub, driven by the rise of BTC treasury companies, ETFs, and the U.S. government’s Bitcoin Strategic Reserve, may also help explain the flow pattern we see: BTC moving out of CSAO toward North America, while USD-denominated stablecoins flow into the region. We will explore this dynamic further in the North America chapter.
Singapore strengthens its position as regional crypto-finance hub
Singapore continues to cement its role as a regional crypto hub, with growth across every major measure except self-custody balances during the 2026 period.
This broad-based growth reflects both rising activity and the steady development of the regulatory and market infrastructure supporting digital assets.
As Yang, of QCP Group, puts it, Singapore has pursued “a series of targeted, incremental measures” that steadily strengthen the country’s digital asset framework.
For instance, Singapore’s Digital Payment Token (DPT) licensing regime and its stablecoin regulatory framework provide a relatively clear basis for regulated firms and institutional participants to assess and develop digital-asset use cases, as noted by Yang.
This clarity may help explain the breadth of growth we are seeing across Singapore’s crypto economy. Institutional-platform activity in particular grew 94% year-to-year, compared with 19% for the rest of CSAO and 15% for the rest of the world. Institutional platforms include services that facilitate larger-scale trading, custody, and financial intermediation, all of which align with Singapore’s role as a global financial center.
Institutional growth is also extending beyond institutional platforms. Tirumalai, the ex-UOB executive, notes that the country’s market has shifted towards institutional tokenisation and wholesale liquidity management, while moving away from speculative activity.
As Singapore has moved toward a more institutionalized digital assets economy the country’s preferences have shifted too. In 2020, 90% of Singapore-held crypto sat in self-custody setups. That rate had fallen to 48% by mid-2026. Still, that rate is ahead of the world benchmark (37%) and the rest of CSAO (32%).
Singapore’s role as a financial hub is also reflected in its cross-border flows. The country has consistently received more cross-border crypto value than it has sent, making it a sustained net recipient of these flows. Its cumulative net inflow rose to about $5 billion by mid-2026.
At the same time, the share of Singapore-attributed crypto held in personal wallets has fallen sharply. From a peak of 88% in April 2023, self-custody dropped to 28% by June 2026, with most of the move concentrated in four months: 71% in November 2024 to 39% by March 2025. Singapore now holds less in self-custody than the rest of CSAO at 41% or the world at 32%, having run well above both for the first three years of the series. These patterns are consistent with Singapore functioning as a hub for trading, custody, market making, and institutional intermediation, with a growing share of attributed balances held through services.
This does not mean individual residents are simply moving assets from personal wallets to exchanges. Self-custody shares can also be affected by asset prices, changes in attribution, and the mix of institutional and retail activity.
India’s CEX activity remains strong
India was CSAO’s third largest crypto economy, and the region’s largest market by CEX activity. From July 2025 through June 2026, India-based users received $88.4 billion in CEX inflows, slightly ahead of Singapore at $82.3 billion. Australia followed at $79.3 billion and Vietnam at $69.8 billion.
Moreover, while India’s centralized-exchange inflows have been volatile, they have broadly kept pace with the rest of CSAO. The relative-growth index begins at 100 in Q3 2021 and ends at 100, meaning India’s cumulative growth in exchange inflows ultimately matched the rest of the region, despite periods of relative outperformance and underperformance along the way.
The market remains largely investment-driven, says Ashish Singhal, co-founder of the Indian exchange CoinSwitch: crypto is “predominantly being used as an investable asset, primarily for buying, holding, and selling digital assets.” But the investor base is broadening, he said, with an influx of investors aged 35+ (and some with larger portfolios) joining crypto’s traditionally younger cohort.
Edul Patel, CEO of Indian exchange Mudrex, sees the same maturation. “For most users, the mindset is shifting from ‘flip’ to ‘accumulate,’” he said, with crypto increasingly held “as a diversifying asset alongside equities, gold and mutual funds.”
There is one notable outlier in India’s story: where users are accessing crypto. The share of exchange volume received by domestic platforms fell sharply in mid-2022 and has been depressed ever since, from around 7% to 0.7%. By comparison, domestic platforms elsewhere in CSAO process an average around 7% of their local volumes.
CoinSwitch’s Singhal points to the “friction” of local tax laws as one reason for the capital exodus. In 2022 India introduced a 1% tax on crypto transactions at exchanges. Compliant domestic exchanges follow this rule and levy the tax, Singhal said, but offshore exchanges may not.
Takeaways for Central & Southeast Asia and Oceania
What comes next for the region will depend on whether and how institutional interest and everyday uses translate into long-term applications.
For both institutional and everyday adoption, the experts we spoke with outlined the necessary conditions for industry confidence to last. As Indodax’s Sutanto notes, regulatory clarity, investor protection, asset quality, and supporting infrastructure will all be important to sustaining growth.
And as Ashwin Chockalingam, chief financial officer at the Malaysian fintech company Blox, cautions, greater institutional participation also raises the stakes: a major industry failure could undermine trust among regulators, financial institutions, and mainstream users just as that confidence is taking hold.
The opportunity, then, extends well beyond crypto as an asset class. There is potential for crypto and blockchain infrastructure to underpin how much of the region moves money, structures markets, coordinates supply chains, and enables new forms of commerce.
As Mudrex’s Patel puts it, 2026 marks a transition “from ‘crypto as an asset’ to ‘crypto and blockchain as infrastructure.’”
FAQs
How big is crypto in Central and Southeast Asia?
CSAO is the sixth-largest crypto region globally. Singapore led regionally with $284 billion in activity from July 2025 to June 2026, followed by Australia at $173.1 billion and India at $135 billion. The region’s overall economy contracted 6.8%, but most markets grew in at least one category of activity.
Are institutions getting into crypto in Singapore and Australia?
Yes, and quickly. Singapore’s institutional-platform activity rose 94% year-over-year to $60 billion, driven by market makers, OTC firms, and institutional brokerages. Australia’s institutional-platform inflows reached $40 billion, accounting for about a quarter of all service inflows in the country. Across the region, institutional platforms processed $152.3 billion.
How are people in Southeast Asia using stablecoins?
Mostly to move money across borders. In every CSAO market analyzed, cross-border stablecoin activity exceeded domestic activity. The regional ratio was 3.2 to 1. Experts say strong domestic payment systems reduce the need for stablecoins locally, while cross-border corridors benefit from faster settlement and lower fees. In the Philippines, an estimated 5-10% of inbound remittances are now settled with stablecoins.
Where is peer-to-peer crypto activity growing fastest?
The Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam recorded 5.4 million small-value P2P transfers (under $10,000) during the 2026 period, 14.4% of the global total despite the three countries representing just 2.5% of the world’s crypto economy. More than four in five domestic transfers were under $1,000.
What comes next for crypto in the region?
Experts pointed to regulatory clarity and infrastructure as the deciding factors. Markets are shifting from speculative trading toward practical uses like cross-border payments, tokenized assets, and treasury management. As one expert put it, 2026 marks a transition “from ‘crypto as an asset’ to ‘crypto and blockchain as infrastructure.'”
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