South Korea operated the largest crypto economy in East Asia between July 2025 and June 2026 at $449.1 billion, expanding 12.3% over the prior period as retail traders rotated into AI-linked tokens, according to a new report from blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis. Japan followed at $228.3 billion, Hong Kong at $192.2 billion, China at $176.3 billion, and Taiwan at $140.4 billion, each shaped by a sharply different user base, the report found.
The AI Trade Now Drives South Korea
By June 2026, AI cryptocurrencies were the single most popular thematic category in Korean won-denominated trading volume, overtaking payment tokens such as XRP. Worldcoin led with $7.41 billion in volume, followed by newcomer SAHARA at $3.2 billion, VIRTUAL at $2.7 billion, BIO at $2 billion, and NEAR at $1.7 billion. Chainalysis measured Korean won trading in AI-crypto assets at 19.5 times Japan’s yen rate, a gap it ties to a retail, high-risk investment culture that mirrors the SK Hynix-led AI equity trade, the country’s dominant listed company. The pivot has happened with little institutional involvement: a 22% tax on crypto gains remains delayed until the start of 2027, and Seoul only began easing a corporate-trading ban in February 2026.
Hong Kong Turns Institutional, Japan Goes On-Chain
Hong Kong’s $192 billion economy is defined less by size than by who is trading. Institutional platforms, spanning custody, prime brokerage, and market-making desks, captured 16% of the city’s service inflows, up from roughly 9% two years earlier and nearly three times any regional peer, while the city drew in almost $24 billion in business-to-business transfers. Japan instead saw retail activity migrate on-chain: decentralized exchanges held a 34.5% share of services, the highest in the region, with activity up more than 200% since 2022 as centralized exchange volume stayed flat.
China’s Stablecoin Underground Keeps Growing
Despite banning crypto services, China still hosted an estimated $176 billion economy dominated by peer-to-peer activity at 59.1% of the total. Chainalysis found China’s self-custodied stablecoins turn over 33.2 times a year, more than three times the 9.3 global average, moving $104.1 billion across 18.1 million transfers. Unique wallets sending stablecoin peer-to-peer transactions grew 43 times between Q1 2024 and Q2 2026, a surge the firm links to the March 2025 expansion of the social credit system into finance.
Chainalysis cautioned that East Asia’s next year could look different. If South Korea’s tax takes effect and corporate access broadens on schedule, retail dominance could give way to a more institutional market for the first time. The findings arrive as the firm has separately attributed a $387 million exchange hack to North Korea, part of a record year for crypto thefts.
