List of major players in the Asian crypto market

Original title: A Primer of Asia's Crypto Landscape
Compiled by: Frank, Foresight News
Foresight News has sorted out the original report and released this Chinese version that summarizes the main points of the report for readers.
The report summarizes the regulatory trends, Crypto market size, talent and developer status, infrastructure adoption, etc. in mainland China, South Korea and Taiwan, China, and collects a sample survey of more than 5,000 people across multiple cities and age groups in mainland China and another sample survey of more than 1,000 cryptocurrency holders. At the same time, CoinNess and BlockTempo conducted corresponding sample surveys in South Korea and Taiwan respectively. The Crypto adoption status and trends presented show that the Asia-Pacific region is expected to become an important driving force for the growth of the cryptocurrency industry in the next 3-5 years.
Regulation China
Mainland China declared initial coin offerings (ICOs) to be illegal fundraising activities in September 2017, issued a mining ban in May 2021, and banned all cryptocurrency transactions in September 2021.
Hong Kong, China, has carried out a number of regulatory actions related to cryptocurrencies in 2023, among which two major policies stand out:
Foreign exchange policy. In February 2023, the Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission issued a consultation document detailing the proposed guidelines for exchange licenses (virtual asset trading platforms). All centralized exchange businesses marketed to Hong Kong investors require a license to operate, and the system will take effect on June 1, 2023; Stablecoin policy. Hong Kong's proposed stablecoin regulations require issuers to have locally registered entities, stablecoins must be fully backed by high-quality liquid assets, and can be exchanged at par for the fiat currency to which they are anchored;
Hong Kong, China can be seen as a potential sandbox for future crypto regulation in mainland China, and Hong Kong will be a bridge for mainland China to expand globally.
 South Korea
Most of South Korea’s cryptocurrency trading volume occurs on five exchanges (UpBit, Bithumb, CoinOne, Korbit, and Gopax) that are authorized to have bank accounts that allow them to convert Korean won fiat currency into cryptocurrencies, so stablecoin pair trading on Korean CEXs is very limited (for example, USDT accounts for less than 1% of Upbit’s trading volume).
In addition, South Korea is formulating relevant regulations for security token issuance (STO).
Taiwan
Regulators such as Taiwan’s Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) classify cryptocurrencies as speculative commodities.
The FTX incident caused Taiwan to lose US$1.7 billion to US$2.1 billion, and more than 231,000 Taiwanese users were affected.
The current division of labor among the three major virtual asset regulatory agencies in Taiwan is as follows:
Taiwan's Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC): responsible for supervising investment and payment platforms, CEX and asset management platforms; Taiwan's Central Bank: manages stablecoin transactions involving legal currency exchange; Taiwan's Ministry of Digital Development: responsible for NFT, Web3 chain projects and other crypto-related projects not covered by the other two regulatory agencies; Market size and Crypto penetration
According to a sample survey of more than 5,000 people across multiple cities and age groups in mainland China + another sample survey of more than 1,000 people on cryptocurrency holders, it was found that only 2.6% of people over the age of 15 in mainland China own cryptocurrencies (86.0% have experience in trading crypto derivatives such as futures and options).
Compared with about 10% in developed countries or regions such as the United States, South Korea and Taiwan, China still has a lot of room for growth in the total number of cryptocurrency users.
The Korean cryptocurrency market is largely driven by retail trading, with trading volume concentrated on three exchanges - Upbit, Bithumb and Coinone. Upbit has a market share of 82.24% in Korean exchanges. In addition, altcoins (that is, cryptocurrencies excluding BTC and ETH) account for 92.9% of South Korea's total crypto trading volume.
Taiwan’s crypto trading volume grew at an annual rate of 31.5%, second only to Japan and Mongolia, and nearly half of the cryptocurrencies received by CEXs (about $30 billion) were DeFi tokens.
The Asia Pacific region is expected to become an important driver of cryptocurrency industry growth in the next 3-5 years.
Infrastructure China
The People's Bank of China began testing the digital RMB in 2019 and officially launched it in April 2021. As China's digital payment penetration rate has always been high, the digital RMB has not yet been widely adopted by the mainstream.
 South Korea
South Korea’s encryption infrastructure is very mature:
Major commercial banks provide bank accounts to crypto exchanges, allowing deposits and withdrawals of virtual assets (NH Bank, the second largest bank in South Korea, etc.); The authorities are introducing various licensing systems such as Information Security Management System (ISMS) and Virtual Asset Service Provider (VASP) to crypto companies to help crypto companies operate their businesses legally;
However, South Korea is still immature in areas such as crypto futures ETFs, and does not yet allow custody and compliant institutional tools.
Taiwan
Taiwan’s crypto infrastructure is still under construction, including its central bank digital currency (CBDC), which is under evaluation and is not expected to be launched until 2026.
Currently, local exchanges in Taiwan are unable to trade derivatives such as perpetual contracts. Most users trade on international exchanges (Binance, FTX before its collapse, etc.). Local exchanges are mainly used as channels for deposits and withdrawals of fiat currencies.
Talent China
Talents in China's encryption field mainly come from top universities. Among the top 100 universities in the blockchain field in 2022 released by CoinDesk, a total of 6 universities in mainland China were on the list, including Peking University (PKU Blockchain), Tsinghua University (THUBA), Shanghai Jiaotong University, Zhejiang University, Sun Yat-sen University, and Fudan University.
 South Korea
Most of South Korea's blockchain talents entered the industry after studying blockchain-related majors in college/graduate school (such as Korea University, Sogang University, Hanyang University, and Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology), or through new employee training camps (such as Codestates and Learnfree).
Taiwan
Most schools in Taiwan lack professional education in blockchain, and only a few universities offer related projects, courses, and student group activities. The blockchain talent pool mainly comes from Taiwan’s top universities, such as the public chain OurChain being developed by National Taiwan University, National Chengchi University being a major research center for Ethereum in Taiwan, and National Tsing Hua University establishing Asia’s first professional blockchain law and policy research center, etc.
Investment Institutions China Hashkey Capital: Founded in 2015, it is one of the earliest institutional players in the blockchain field, with a particular focus on the Ethereum ecosystem. In addition to investing in related projects such as Cosmos, Polkadot, and Coinlist, it is also active in CeFi, general Web3 infrastructure and other fields; Dragonfly: Founded in 2018, it currently includes three branches: Dragonfly Ventures (VC), Dragonfly Liquid (LP), and Metastable (Hedge Fund). Its investment areas cover DeFi, CeFi, infrastructure, NFT and L1/L2, etc.; Foresight Ventures: Founded in 2021, it is committed to discovering alpha investment opportunities in the market, making good use of a variety of investment strategies, and empowering investment companies throughout their life cycle; South Korea Alphanonce: Founded in 2018, it provides full-stack solutions for various customers and counterparties, covering accelerators, investments, liquidity provision and trading; Hashed: Headquartered in Seoul and Silicon Valley, it focuses on the primary market; 100&100 Venture Capital: It began investing in blockchain projects in 2017 and is currently operating a $38 million Web3 Game Investment Fund; Developers and Operators China
By the end of 2021, the number of developers in China exceeded 73 million, second only to the United States, with Java developers accounting for 50%, 76% of programmers earning more than US$1,200 per month, and 20.5% of developers earning between US$2,500 and US$4,500 per month.
The main reasons that hinder developers from entering the Web3 industry include a lack of basic understanding of cryptocurrencies, a lack of a systematic approach to approach the Web3 industry, concerns about unstable or illegal work in the Web3 industry in China, and more.
China's crypto projects cover almost all fields including DeFi, infrastructure, GameFi, metaverse, etc., such as Loopring, Stepn, Lifeform, X2Y2, SpaceID, Conflux, Alchemy Pay, Animoca Brands, Certik, etc.
 South Korea
South Korean crypto projects are mainly driven by two large technology companies (Kakao, Naver) and large Web2 gaming companies (WEMIX, etc.).
Taiwan
Taipei Ethereum Meetup (TEM) is the largest developer community in Taiwan, with more than 6,000 members. In addition, in the DeFi ecosystem, there is Perpetual Protocol; in terms of wallets, there are Blocto and others; in the development of NFT platforms, there are Oursong and Lootex; as well as some entrepreneurial communities such as Bu Zhi DAO and government-involved organizations such as g0v.