Crypto transactions in Asia surge 706%, says Chainalysis

The Asian crypto market has grown by a staggering 706% in a year, totalling more than 14% of all crypto transactions worldwide.

That’s according to Chainalysis – the blockchain data, software, services and research company.

Its latest update – from the Geography of Cryptocurrency report – says the Central and Southern Asian and Oceanic (CSAO) crypto market received $572.5bn between the period of July 2020 and June 2021.

The share of global cryptocurrency activity increased by 2% in the region, making CSAO one of the fastest-growing regions in the world.

Furthermore, CSAO had the top three nations in the Chainalysis index for the adoption of cryptocurrencies. Vietnam, India and Pakistan filled out positions one, two and three respectively in terms of adoption of crypto. Thailand and the Philippines came in at 12th and 15th in the index.

The growth in crypto in CSAO has been fuelled by an explosion in decentralised finance (DeFi) in the region. By February, more than 50% of transaction volume related to DeFi in some capacity.

The industry in CSAO has been dominated by institutional financial payments, the majority of which fall within the bracket between $10,000 to $1m. More intriguingly, 42% of transactions from India had a value of above $10m, suggesting a widespread uptake among more sophisticated, institutional investors.

Krishna Sriram, Managing Director at Quantstamp, believes that the reason behind the DeFi expansion was a result of centralised exchanges being harder to access, whereas “DeFi doesn’t discern where you’re from or care if it has a relationship with your bank, it’s an open, permissionless system”.