East Asia Crypto Adoption Report: South Korea’s AI Trade Comes to Crypto

What happened

Institutional platforms in Hong Kong received 87% more than the year before, the fastest institutional growth in East Asia. Summary South Korea leads the region with a $449.1 billion crypto economy, followed by Japan ($228.3 billion), Hong Kong ($192.2… The post East Asia Crypto Adoption Report: South Korea’s AI Trade Comes to Crypto appeared first on Chainalysis .

Eastern Asia’s crypto economy is among the most diverse in the world. From country to country, wholly distinct regulatory environments, risk appetites, and business objectives push users toward different use cases.

While the region’s crypto economy contracted modestly overall between July 2025 and June 2026, the decline was far from uniform. And Japanese users moved onto decentralized exchanges (DEXs), where inflows rose 36%.

That contraction aligns with crypto’s global bear market, but is only one part of a story of some of the world’s largest standalone crypto hubs. Hong Kong’s 16% institutional platform share, nearly three times any regional neighbor’s, is concentrated among custody and prime brokerage providers and market-making desks (which together account for 85% of the category), reflecting the city’s position as the settlement layer for cross-border institutional trades.