Overview of the highlights of Chainalysis 2026 Cryptocurrency Adoption Index Report.

Author: Chainalysis

Compiled by: Chopper, Foresight News

Cryptocurrency is a global trend with completely different positions in the eyes of different people. To Western capital allocators, it is a technological upgrade, a tokenized asset that may reshape asset trading models; to low-income workers in the Global South, it is a lifeline, with stablecoins helping them quickly transfer funds and hedge against political and economic turmoil; to the general public around the world, it is an alternative investment.

This year's regional report focuses on an extreme market cycle in the history of cryptocurrency. The reporting period is from July 1, 2025, to June 30, 2026: during this period, Bitcoin first set a historic high and then experienced the largest dollar drawdown ever, dropping $67,000 from peak to trough. The total market capitalization of cryptocurrency halved, shrinking by $2.1 trillion, marking the most severe bear market since the string of scandals in 2022.

Like previous crypto bear markets, the growth of the crypto economy faced obstacles during this cycle, but the contraction was very limited. Data shows that the total global crypto economy (including platform inflows, domestic peer-to-peer activities, and cross-border transfers) only shrank by 1.6% compared to the previous period. As of June 30, 2026, the on-chain economic activity scale was $9.4 trillion; the previous reporting period (ending June 30, 2025) was $9.5 trillion.

Global crypto economic activity remains resilient in the bear market

2026 could have seen a more severe downturn. Following the halving in total asset market capitalization, transaction volumes would need to double to maintain the same scale of capital flow. If crypto assets were merely considered as investment targets, the price drop in 2026 would lead to a much greater decline in global capital flow compared to 2023. In the 2023 cycle, the total crypto market value only shrank by $300 billion, but economic activity plummeted by 23%; whereas this time the market value shrank by $2.1 trillion, but economic activity only decreased by $0.1 trillion.

The increasingly diverse practical applications of the crypto industry have buffered the market's contraction.

Three regions achieved growth, led by Sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America

Significant Increase in Small Transactions

Most of the global crypto economy comes from various service platforms used by users for buying, selling, trading, lending, and transferring. We track this large segment to determine which types of users are driving on-chain activity. During the 2026 reporting period, the inflow of small amounts of funds to platforms significantly increased: transfers under $100 grew by 78.4%, while transfers in the $100 to $1,000 range grew by 58.6%. Retail user trading volume was only $273 billion, a small proportion of nearly $10 trillion in total activity, but this is enough to prove that ordinary retail investors did not exit the market during the bear phase.

Small transactions are growing faster

Institutional-grade large transactions also showed resilience in the environment of falling prices. The scale of transfers over $1 million only declined by 7.2% year-over-year. Considering the steep drop in currency prices, this is a very small decrease. At the market's lowest point, the value of the crypto assets they held dropped by half. As mentioned earlier: when asset prices are halved, to maintain the original capital volume, the transaction scale must double, and institutional capital flows withstood this challenge.

Explosive Growth of Cross-Border Stablecoin Transfers

The U.S. "GENIUS Act," the EU MiCA legislation, and emerging regulatory frameworks introduced by Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore, and the UK are promoting the popularization of stablecoins. Conservatively estimated, the monthly cross-border stablecoin transfer amount grew from $11 billion in January 2025 to $24 billion in June 2026, with the real scale likely being even higher. During the reporting period, the total amount of cross-border stablecoin transfers increased from $124.2 billion to $220.3 billion, a growth of 77.5%. These cross-border transactions have an average amount of about $3,000, not large institutional trades, but typical daily scenarios: payments to suppliers, cross-border remittances, or converting savings into assets to hedge against local currency risks.

Tether's Vice President Philip Gradwell stated, "On-chain fund flows have become stable, relying continuously on wallets, no longer characterized by volatility. This is a trait of trade and business activities, rather than mere speculation."

Cross-border fund flows of stablecoins

All cross-border fund flows have a start point and an endpoint, forming what is referred to in trade economics as capital channels. The top 25% of capital channels carry 96.1% of cross-border stablecoin funds, with a year-over-year growth of 70.8%. As stablecoins integrate into global commerce, fund flows into many previously dormant channels are revived. Before the 2026 cycle, the total scale of the bottom three groups of channels was only $260 million; this cycle it has reached $8.66 billion, with new capital channels being rapidly established. The report tracks 4,708 new cross-border channels, carrying a total of $26.4 billion in funds, with a large volume of transactions using the mainstream stablecoin USDT.

Gradwell noted, "The true value of USDT is reflected in the long tail market. Many economic groups with high traditional financial costs and limited services can use USDT. The average cost per transaction is only 1 cent, and transactions settle instantly with just a mobile phone."

Stablecoin cross-border amount categorized by trading channels

This report's cross-border statistics only include transfers where both the sender and receiver's countries can be identified. Transfers where wallet addresses cannot be located or where the transaction paths obscure one end are not counted. Therefore, the actual scale of stablecoin cross-border transactions is far higher than the reported $220.3 billion.

P2P Transactions See Significant Increase

While various crypto platform businesses face a winter, peer-to-peer transactions are gaining strength against the trend. Funds flowing to exchanges, DeFi protocols, and other commercial platforms decreased by 4.3% year-over-year, dropping from $9.3 trillion to $8.9 trillion; meanwhile, the scale of direct transfers between personal wallets within the same country skyrocketed by 302.9%, increasing from $56.8 billion to $228.7 billion. The proportion of peer-to-peer transactions in both activity types rose from 0.6% to 2.5%, with increases across all eight major regions.

P2P transaction shares improved relative to platform service transactions across all regions

Most platform transactions involve exchanging and depositing operations, which are closely tied to price movements. When prices are halved, the corresponding dollar value of the same number of transactions is directly halved, and speculative turnarounds will also decline with market sentiment. Stablecoin payments, however, are not affected by this: priced in dollars, the transaction amount depends on the user's actual needs and can occur normally regardless of market fluctuations.

The internal structures of platforms and peer-to-peer channels are also different. Even when total capital inflow to platforms decreases, the inflow of stablecoins within the platforms still rose by 5.3%. Total domestic peer-to-peer trading of all assets fell by 19.7%, but stablecoin trading surged by 377.7%. The core difference between the two tracks lies in asset types: 96% of peer-to-peer transactions are stablecoins, whereas that's not the case for platform transactions. The bear market has severely impacted price-sensitive speculative assets, while stablecoins with payment attributes are nearly unaffected.

Stablecoins Serve as a Value Anchor Amid Market Turmoil

On-chain balances (the total dollar amount of crypto assets in wallets and platforms) follow the fluctuations of the overall market. The global statistical balance dropped from a peak of $860 billion in September 2025 to $440 billion in June 2026. During a nine-month downtrend, the stock of stablecoins remained in the range of $98 billion to $109 billion. Stablecoins are pegged to the dollar, and their on-chain value does not fluctuate with cryptocurrency market prices; the total balance of other crypto assets fell by 55.6%. By June 2026, stablecoins accounted for 22.5% of the global on-chain asset balance, not due to massive user purchases, but due to passive increases caused by the devaluation of other assets.

This pattern is not a first occurrence. From December 2022 to September 2025, the stock of stablecoins increased by 72.5%, and then remained stable during the declining market in 2026. With each round of bull and bear cycles, the baseline of stablecoin stock is higher than the previous round; each time the overall market declines, the proportion of stablecoins in total assets increases.

Global crypto asset balances and the proportion of stablecoin balances

Brazil Tops the Global Cryptocurrency Adoption Index

Based on four indicators: platform capital inflows, wallet balances, domestic crypto economy, and cross-border fund flows, Brazil ranks first globally in the grassroots cryptocurrency adoption index. It did not take the global first place in any single category, but maintained a strong performance relative to its economic size during the bear market, surpassing mature markets such as the United States and Japan.

Top 20 countries in the grassroots cryptocurrency adoption index, reporting period: July 1, 2025 — June 30, 2026

Statistical Methodology

The grassroots adoption index measures the level of cryptocurrency adoption across countries globally, composed of four sub-indices representing different segments of the crypto economy:

Platform capital inflow: funds received by centralized exchanges, DeFi protocols, and other crypto services, weighted by each country's per capita GDP.

Domestic peer-to-peer transfers: direct transfers between personal wallets within the same country.

Cross-border transfers: fund flows crossing national borders, including four types of paths: person-to-person, person-to-platform, platform-to-person, and business-to-business.

Asset balances: the total amount of holdings at a specific point in time, including identifiable personal wallet assets and balances in certain platforms (exchanges, no KYC exchanges, P2P exchanges).

The report ranks 117 countries with sufficient data. The raw values are first weighted by purchasing power parity and then standardized through min-max normalization, uniformly mapped to a 0-1 range, where the country with the lowest score is 0 and the highest is 1. A country’s total index score is the geometric mean of the four normalized scores. This algorithm encourages balanced development of the four indicators, avoiding a situation where excellent performance in one metric overshadows other weaknesses. Taking Brazil as an example, it did not achieve a global first in any individual metric, but all four indicators were consistently strong, resulting in an overall top ranking.

Method of Determining Transaction Attribution

Classification of personal wallets depends on behavioral characteristics, such as interaction records with local exchanges from a single country. The determination of the platform end is more complex: exchanges aggregate all user funds into the same on-chain address, and blockchain alone cannot ascertain user nationality. Platform funds are allocated to corresponding countries based on website traffic shares. Asset balances on platforms adopt the same allocation logic. High-income countries' traffic usually corresponds to larger transaction amounts. Therefore, the traffic share of each country is re-weighted using the square root of per capita GDP. This adjustment allows income to influence distribution without completely dominating the outcome. The total scale of funds globally remains unchanged, only redistributed among different countries.

For example, in June 2026, a leading exchange saw both South Korea and India having a traffic share of 8.1%, and the total inflow that month was $119.3 billion, with each country initially allocated $9.71 billion. After adjustment, South Korea's share rose to 11.6% (approximately $13.87 billion), while India's share dropped to 3.2% (around $3.78 billion), a 3.7 times difference, which perfectly corresponds to the square root ratio of the two countries’ per capita GDP (South Korea $36,239 vs India $2,695). The total funds of the exchange remain unchanged, and the adjustments only alter the distribution ratios between countries.

Original report: https://www.chainalysis.com/reports/the-2026-geography-of-cryptocurrency-report