OECD Report: Asia Becomes the Global Crypto Epicenter – Stablecoins as Growth Driver and Risk Factor

The OECD’s new Asia Capital Markets Report 2026 paints the picture of a region in the grip of a crypto boom: 69 percent growth in blockchain transactions, a stablecoin surge across Southeast Asia – but also record levels of illicit financial flows and hacking attacks. Regulators are catching up, though in completely opposite directions.

The OECD published its Asia Capital Markets Report 2026 in June – and for the first time dedicates an entire chapter to digital assets. The core message: no region in the world is currently growing faster in the crypto sector than Asia. Between June 2024 and June 2025, blockchain-based crypto-asset transactions in the region grew by 69 percent – the highest rate worldwide, well ahead of Latin America, North America and Europe.

Market Correction After All-Time High

Globally, the market capitalisation of all crypto-assets peaked at USD 4.4 trillion in October 2025. The market has corrected significantly since then: valuations stood at around USD 3 trillion at the start of 2026 and roughly USD 2.6 trillion by April 2026. The OECD reads this as a reminder of the asset class’s persistently high volatility – particularly in a region where retail investors dominate the market.

India and Korea Lead, Vietnam Shows Extreme Crypto Penetration

In absolute capital inflows, India and Korea lead the region, followed by Vietnam and Indonesia. The picture becomes remarkable when inflows are measured against economic output: crypto inflows into Vietnam recently amounted to almost 50 percent of GDP, with Cambodia at 28 and Pakistan at 26 percent. According to the report, five of the world’s top ten countries for crypto adoption are located in Asia: India, Indonesia, Vietnam, the Philippines and Pakistan.

The OECD attributes the growth to a young, tech-savvy population with rapidly expanding internet usage – particularly across ASEAN – combined with high remittance volumes and, in parts, limited access to the traditional financial system.

Stablecoins: USD 300 Billion and 30 Percent of Global Trading

A key focus of the report is stablecoins. The five largest stablecoins reached a market capitalisation of nearly USD 300 billion in March 2026 – up 48 percent in 2025 alone. While stablecoins account for only around 10 percent of the overall crypto market, their economic significance is growing disproportionately: Asia accounted for roughly 30 percent of global stablecoin trading activity in 2025.

Stablecoins play a particularly prominent role in the ASEAN region – between 2020 and 2022 they already made up at least half of all crypto flows there, a share that has risen further since the 2022 market downturn. Beyond trading, lending and DeFi liquidity, the OECD highlights remittances as a key use case: in expensive remittance corridors – India, China, the Philippines, Pakistan and Bangladesh are among the world’s largest recipient countries – stablecoins such as Tether could significantly lower costs compared with traditional channels. Added to this is their function as a hedge against local currency volatility in emerging economies.

The Dark Side: USD 154 Billion in Illicit Financial Flows

The report does not hold back on warnings. The misuse of crypto-assets for illicit finance reached an estimated USD 154 billion in 2025. The most striking trend: sanctions evasion by state-linked actors. Inflows into crypto-assets by sanctioned entities and jurisdictions surged by nearly 700 percent in 2025 compared with the previous year; between 2020 and 2025 they totalled an estimated USD 181 billion.

Stablecoins, of all things, have emerged as the preferred vehicle: in 2025, 84 percent of illicit crypto inflows involved stablecoins. According to the OECD, some sanctioned financial institutions have even issued their own stablecoins to circumvent traditional payment rails.

Fraud also remains a mass phenomenon: between 2020 and 2025, around USD 69 billion flowed into crypto-assets linked to scams and fraud shops. A spectacular case from the region: the United States and the United Kingdom seized USD 15 billion worth of Bitcoin held by a Cambodia-based financial group accused of fraud, money laundering and other criminal activities.

North Korea’s Hackers Dominate the Cyber Threat Landscape

On cybersecurity, the report paints a grim picture. Over the past decade, attacks on wallets, exchanges and service providers have caused losses of roughly USD 16.5 billion. The most common attack vectors: compromised private keys and wallet phishing, together responsible for over USD 9 billion in damage.

In 2025, centralised exchanges worldwide lost around USD 2 billion to attacks – the most prominent case being the ByBit hack in February 2025, attributed to actors linked to North Korea. The trend continues: in 2026, DPRK-linked hackers have already stolen USD 577 million in two attacks, more than three-quarters of all hacking losses so far this year. State-linked North Korean hackers accounted for 64 percent of global losses in 2025. The typical pattern: stolen assets are converted into stablecoins across multiple blockchains and then laundered into fiat.

As a future risk, the OECD also flags quantum computing, which could break the encryption of public keys – a fundamental problem for property rights over crypto-assets, which have few backup safeguards.

The report also touches on illegal mining: Malaysia’s national utility puts its losses from electricity theft by Bitcoin miners between 2020 and August 2025 at USD 1 billion – across nearly 14,000 suspected mining sites in the country.

Regulation: Asia on Two Tracks

On the regulatory front, the region is drifting apart. The OECD identifies two camps:

The restrictive camp: China reaffirmed its ban on crypto trading and related activities – in place since 2021 – with a new notice in February 2026, explicitly including stablecoins. India still does not formally regulate crypto-assets but requires service providers to register with the Financial Intelligence Unit and comply with AML obligations; the central bank RBI continues to push for tighter restrictions. The irony: despite this restrictive stance, India ranks among the world’s largest retail crypto markets.

The formalisers: Pakistan passed its Virtual Assets Act in July 2025 and established a dedicated regulator, PVARA. Vietnam’s Law on Digital Technology Industry took effect in January 2026 – both countries are catching up in regulation with what has long been market reality. Hong Kong’s 2025 Stablecoin Ordinance enables the licensing of issuers of HKD-backed stablecoins. In Korea, the Digital Asset Basic Act is under parliamentary review, set to tighten licensing and oversight – with dedicated stablecoin provisions.

In parallel, the region’s central banks are pushing ahead with digital currencies: 11 of the 18 Asian jurisdictions covered by the report are already in the CBDC pilot phase, with Sri Lanka and Chinese Taipei in development.

What the OECD Recommends

The report’s policy recommendations read as a plea for harmonisation: aligning national frameworks with international standards (FSB principles, IOSCO recommendations, the Basel framework, FATF standards), robust consumer protection with enforceable obligations for stablecoin issuers, targeted financial literacy programmes for young first-time investors, and closer cross-border cooperation against sanctions evasion and cyberattacks.

The backdrop is serious: Asia was at the epicenter of the 2022/23 crypto crash – and according to the OECD, retail investors bore a disproportionate share of the losses, while large holders and insiders managed to reduce their exposure in time. An OECD survey also shows that only 55 percent of crypto holders even know that crypto-assets are not legal tender in their jurisdiction.

The report’s bottom line: Asia’s crypto boom is here to stay – whether it benefits or harms the region will be decided by the quality of its regulation.

Source: OECD (2026), Asia Capital Markets Report 2026, Chapter 5 “Developments in crypto-asset markets“, OECD Publishing. Data sources cited in the report include Chainalysis, CoinGecko, CoinDesk Research, DefiLlama, BIS and the IMF.

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