Standard Chartered · South Korea · Hong Kong · China · Japan · India · Cointelegraph
China’s P2P stablecoin wallets surge 43x, Korea’s $450 billion crypto economy: Asia Express
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Despite ongoing bans, China has seen a big surge in peer-to-peer stablecoin use.
Key facts
- The blockchain analytics 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
- 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%
- China’s domestic stablecoin transfer volume added $4.9 billion in March 2026, the largest monthly increase shown
- Chainalysis ranked South Korea as East Asia’s largest crypto economy at $449.1 billion
Summary
The number of unique wallets sending peer-to-peer (P2P) stablecoin transactions in China grew 43-fold between the first quarter of 2024 and the second quarter of 2026, according to Chainalysis. The blockchain analytics 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. Stablecoin holdings turned over 33.2 times per year, more than three times the global average of 9.3, a pattern Chainalysis said was consistent with users treating stablecoins as working capital. Chainalysis’s new report estimated that China’s crypto economy is worth at least $176 billion.