South Korea has taken the top spot among East Asian crypto markets, reaching a volume of $449.1 billion between July 2025 and June 2026. This rapid market growth was mainly driven by active trading in artificial intelligence (AI) tokens, making the country a regional leader.

Dominance of AI Tokens and Retail Market Driver

According to Chainalysis, South Korea's crypto market volume grew by 12.3% in 2026 compared to the previous year. The main driver of growth remains retail investors, who are actively investing in AI-related cryptocurrencies. At the same time, centralized exchange volume in the country increased by 16.3%, while institutional participation remains limited due to regulatory barriers.

"South Korea's market is known for its focus on retail investors," noted Francis Kang, Executive Director of Korea Blockchain Week.

Korean financial institutions are only beginning to build digital asset teams and pilot projects in stablecoins and tokenization. AI tokens enjoy particular popularity among investors. By June 2026, this category became the largest by trading volume share in Korean won, even surpassing payment tokens like XRP.

Trading volume of AI cryptocurrencies in Korean won is 19.5 times higher than in Japanese yen. The most popular assets include:

  • Worldcoin (WLD) — $7.41B

  • SAHARA — $3.2B

  • VIRTUAL — $2.7B

  • BIO — $2.B

  • NEAR — $1.7B

Market leaders shift quickly: VIRTUAL and KAITO tokens, which dominated in 2025, yielded their positions to Worldcoin and SAHARA. Chainalysis analysts emphasize that Korean traders react faster to AI token trends than their peers in other regional markets.

Japan remains the second-largest crypto market in East Asia with a volume of $228.3 billion. A key feature of the Japanese market is the high share of decentralized exchanges (DEXs), accounting for 34.5% of the service segment — the highest indicator in the region. Since 2022, DEX activity in Japan has grown by over 200%, with about 25% of users transferring funds into DeFi protocols after withdrawing from exchanges.

"The most notable activity is occurring in perpetual futures contracts," stated Taishi Sato, CEO of DeFimans.

Japanese traders actively use platforms like Hyperliquid to manage stock portfolios and macro exposures, rather than just traditional crypto trading.

Hong Kong, for its part, has become the region's primary institutional crypto hub. Institutional platforms, such as OTC desks, custodians, and market makers, account for 16% of inflows into the service segment — three times higher than any other East Asian country. Total B2B transfers in Hong Kong reached nearly $24 billion over the year, while net institutional capital flowing through regulated platforms since mid-2022 reached $17.4 billion.

In China, despite an official ban on cryptocurrency services, P2P transactions dominate, accounting for 59.1% of the total crypto economy. The number of unique wallets making peer-to-peer stablecoin transfers increased 43-fold from Q1 2024 to Q2 2026.

South Korea plans to pass a new digital asset law in the second half of 2026, which could further impact the development of the national cryptocurrency market.

Do you think that in the near future, Japan or South Korea could catch up with—and eventually surpass—China in terms of influence on the Asian cryptocurrency and blockchain market?