China’s P2P stablecoin wallets surge 43x, South Korea’s crypto economy reaches $449.1 billion

Chainalysis’s latest numbers show two different Asia stories that matter to high-risk payment players: in China, stablecoin activity is increasingly behaving like working capital, while in South Korea the crypto economy is large but exchange profitability has taken a hit. Singapore adds a third angle, with Standard Chartered lining up institutional crypto custody.

1. In China, the number of unique wallets sending peer-to-peer (P2P) stablecoin transactions grew 43-fold between the first quarter of 2024 and the second quarter of 2026, according to Chainalysis. The company recorded $104.1 billion across 18.1 million transfers involving China’s self-custodied stablecoin holdings during the 2026 reporting period, which ran from July 2025 to June 2026.
2. Chainalysis said those stablecoin holdings turned over 33.2 times per year, more than three times the global average of 9.3. Its read-through was straightforward: users appear to be treating stablecoins as working capital, not as a passive store of value. Domestic P2P activity made up 59.1% of China’s crypto economy total, 3.5 times its share in the 2025 reporting period.
3. China’s crypto economy is worth at least $176 billion, the report estimated. Domestic stablecoin transfer volume added $4.9 billion in March 2026 alone, the largest monthly increase in the data shown. For PSPs, the practical point is that China’s on-chain dollar activity is not just existing — it is cycling quickly.
4. South Korea was ranked as East Asia’s largest crypto economy at $449.1 billion. Activity rose 12.3% in the year to June 2026 from the previous year, with retail traders showing a strong preference for AI-linked tokens. That is the growth side of the ledger; the margin side looks less cheerful.
5. The Korea Financial Intelligence Unit (KoFIU) said average daily trading volume at domestic virtual asset exchanges fell 44% from the previous six months, while market capitalization dropped 33% and won-denominated deposits fell 35%. Exchange sales declined 41% over the same period, even as the number of accounts eligible to trade rose 0.4%. In other words: more eligible accounts, less actual throughput, and much thinner economics for the exchanges.

Elsewhere in the region, Securitize said its stock jumped 8% after announcing a partnership with South Korean technology company LG CNS. The two signed a memorandum of understanding to develop tokenized assets and digital asset infrastructure for South Korean financial institutions, with South Korea’s Financial Services Commission having proposed rules last week for the issuance and circulation of tokenized stocks, bonds, funds and other securities. The framework is set to take effect in February 2027.

In Singapore, Standard Chartered said it plans to launch digital asset custody services for institutional clients, including select cryptocurrencies, stablecoins and tokenized real-world assets. For banks and PSPs watching the region, that is the usual signal: when custody, tokenization, and institutional rails start lining up in the same market, the compliance and counterparty discussions tend to follow.