Singapore crypto activity grows 55.4% to $284 billion as the broader CSAO market contracts

Singapore did not just hold up in a softer regional market; it pulled away. Crypto activity in the city-state rose 55.4% to $284 billion in the year ended June 2026, while the broader Central and Southeast Asia and Oceania (CSAO) crypto economy contracted 6.8%, according to Chainalysis. For high-risk PSPs, the interesting part is not the headline number but the composition: institutional flow, not retail churn, did most of the work.

1. Chainalysis said Singapore regained its position as the largest crypto economy in CSAO after the jump in activity. The growth was concentrated in institutional platform activity, which increased 94% to $60 billion. That segment was dominated by a small group of market makers, over-the-counter trading firms, and institutional brokerages.
2. The company told Cointelegraph that Singapore’s institutional ecosystem was “very concentrated” and driven mostly by high-volume activity on existing platforms rather than the launch of new services. In practice, that is the sort of market where PSPs care less about consumer acquisition and more about who already has the pipes, the liquidity, and the licensing position to move size.
3. The regulatory backdrop matters here. In 2025, the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) required local crypto firms serving overseas clients to obtain a license or exit. StraitsX CEO Tianwei Liu said that move reduced speculative activity while leaving more institutional players, including banks and large companies, using blockchain in production.
4. MAS has also been pushing in the opposite direction on tokenization and settlement. Its BLOOM program supports trials using regulated stablecoins and tokenized bank money. On March 25, Ripple joined the initiative to test cross-border trade settlement using RLUSD.
5. Elsewhere in CSAO, Chainalysis pointed to rising small-value peer-to-peer (P2P) activity in the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam. The three countries recorded a combined 5.4 million P2P transfers, domestic and cross-border, worth less than $10,000 during the reporting period. That was 14.4% of the global total, even though the three markets accounted for just 2.5% of the global crypto economy.

The retail P2P data is also useful for payment operators because it shows where crypto touches local bank rails. More than four in five domestic P2P transfers across the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam were below $1,000, with an average transfer size of $618 versus $1,210 across the rest of the world. In the Philippines, the International Monetary Fund has said crypto use is primarily driven by remittances and investment, and World Bank data show personal remittances were equivalent to 8.5% of GDP in 2025.

Vietnam and Thailand have their own practical drivers. In June, Vietnamese outlet Tuoi Tre reported that P2P trading has become an important fiat gateway because the Vietnamese dong is not widely supported in direct crypto trading pairs. In March, Reuters reported that most crypto traders in Vietnam rely on overseas exchanges, making P2P channels an important bridge between local bank accounts and crypto on those platforms. In Thailand, the Securities and Exchange Commission said in September it had observed a significant increase in the volume and value of stablecoin transactions, particularly USDT.