Chainalysis: South Korea leads East Asia crypto economy with $449.1B

South Korea just posted the kind of year most crypto markets would envy during a downturn. According to Chainalysis, the country recorded $449.1 billion in crypto activity between July 2025 and June 2026, the largest of any East Asian market. That figure is up 12.3% period-over-period. Meanwhile, the rest of the region spent the same stretch going slightly backwards. The findings come from the blockchain analytics firm’s East Asia Crypto Adoption Report, released on October 5, 2026. Retail traders and the AI token rush Chainalysis attributes most of South Korea’s growth to retail trading on centralized exchanges. What those investors were buying is the more interesting part. AI-themed tokens became the dominant force in Korean trading, overtaking assets like XRP that had previously been crowd favorites. By June 2026, AI tokens held the largest share of trading volume in the country. The leaderboard looked like this: Worldcoin (WLD): $7.41 billion in volume SAHARA: $3.2 billion VIRTUAL: $2.7 billion The enthusiasm is notably concentrated. AI-themed trading volume denominated in Korean won was 19.5 times higher than comparable volume in Japanese yen, according to the report. A region...