Singapore's crypto economy expanded 55.4% to $284 billion in the year ended June 2026, making it the largest measured crypto market in Central and Southeast Asia and Oceania despite a broader regional contraction, according to blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis. The findings form part of Chainalysis' 2026 analysis of crypto adoption across the Central and Southeast Asia and Oceania region, an annual series that tracks the value of cryptocurrency moving on-chain across national markets.

Institutional Activity Drove the Gains

Growth was led by institutional platforms, where activity rose 94% to $60 billion. Chainalysis said the activity was concentrated among market makers, over-the-counter trading firms, and institutional brokerages, and was largely driven by high-volume trading on existing platforms rather than a rapid expansion in the number of new services.

The broader Central and Southeast Asia and Oceania region contracted 6.8% during the period. Institutional platforms across the wider region processed $152.3 billion, up 40% from a year earlier. Singapore accounted for the largest share of that activity, with institutional growth significantly outpacing the 19% increase recorded across the rest of the region. The contrast is notable: professional trading desks expanded in Singapore even as the surrounding regional market shrank, marking the city-state out as the region's institutional crypto hub rather than a retail-driven adoption story.

Singapore also recorded growth across major areas of crypto activity, including a 30% increase in flows through centralized exchanges and a 69% rise in decentralized exchange activity.

Regulatory Clarity and Market Infrastructure

The shift comes as Singapore combines tighter digital-asset regulation with efforts to develop tokenisation, stablecoins, and on-chain settlement infrastructure. The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) has also supported trials involving regulated stablecoins and tokenised bank money. Digital asset providers in Singapore operate under a licensing regime for digital payment token services, and MAS finalized a regulatory framework for stablecoin issuers in 2023, giving the institutional participants behind these trading figures a defined set of rules to operate within. Its Project Guardian initiative, which brings banks and asset managers into tokenization pilots, is part of the same push to build institutional-grade on-chain market infrastructure.

Stablecoins Scale Cross-Border Payments

Chainalysis said stablecoins are increasingly being used for cross-border transactions across the region. Cross-border stablecoin activity was 3.2 times larger than domestic activity across the markets studied, reflecting demand for faster and potentially lower-cost international settlement. For a region where remittances are a significant part of cross-border money flows, stablecoins that settle on public blockchains within minutes offer an alternative to correspondent banking routes that can involve multiple intermediaries and longer settlement windows.

A Region of Divergent Adoption Patterns

The data points to a market increasingly divided between institutional financial activity in Singapore and more payment-oriented crypto use elsewhere in Southeast Asia. The Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam recorded 5.4 million small-value peer-to-peer transfers of less than $10,000 during the period, representing 14.4% of the global total despite the three countries accounting for only 2.5% of global crypto activity. More than 4 in 5 domestic transfers in those markets were below $1,000, a profile consistent with everyday payments and remittances rather than large-ticket trading.

Singapore's figures therefore show a different pattern of crypto adoption, with institutional trading, market infrastructure, and cross-border financial applications playing a growing role alongside retail activity. With the full 2026 Global Crypto Adoption Index providing country-by-country rankings and MAS continuing to refine its stablecoin and tokenization frameworks, subsequent editions of the regional analysis will show whether Singapore's institutional-led growth keeps widening its lead over a contracting region.

Related coverage: The 2026 Global Crypto Adoption Index by Chainalysis and P2P Activity in Africa Led Crypto Adoption in H1 2026, both from BitcoinKE.

Source: BitcoinKE