Chainalysis research report: South Korea's cryptocurrency economy reaches $449.1 billion, ranking first in East Asia, with AI token trading becoming the largest thematic sector BlockBeats news, on October 5, Chainalysis said in the East Asia Encryption Adoption Report released on October 5 that although the overall encryption activity in East Asia slightly contracted with the global bear market from July 2025 to June 2026, there has been significant differentiation within the region: South Korea is still the largest retail trading center, Hong Kong is becoming an institutional capital settlement hub, Japanese users are accelerating to switch to DEX and perpetual contracts, and the point-to-point use of stable currencies in Chinese Mainland continues to expand. According to the report, the size of South Korea's cryptocurrency economy reached 449.1 billion US dollars during the same period, an increase of 12.3% compared to the previous cycle, continuing to rank first in East Asia; Japan, Hong Kong, Chinese Mainland and Taiwan were 228.3 billion, 192.2 billion, 176.3 billion and 140.4 billion US dollars respectively. The growth in South Korea mainly comes from the increase in capital flows related to trading platforms, with a report stating that the local trading platform ecosystem has added approximately $51.1 billion in new traffic. The most prominent change in the Korean market comes from AI token trading. According to Chainalysis, as of June 2026, AI related encrypted assets have become the largest thematic sector in Korean won trading, surpassing payment tokens such as XRP in popularity. According to the report statistics, Worldcoin (WLD) recorded a trading volume of $7.41 billion during the observation period, and SAHARA, VIRTUAL, BIO, and NEAR also became active varieties. The proportion of AI token trading priced in Korean won is about 19.5 times that of the Japanese yen market, indicating that Korean retail investors are extending their AI investment preferences in the domestic stock market to the cryptocurrency market. However, South Korean institutional funds are still in the preparation stage. The report points out that local banks and securities firms have generally formed digital asset teams and promoted pilot projects for stablecoins, custody, and tokenization, but direct participation of enterprises in cryptocurrency investment has not yet formed a scale. If the cryptocurrency income tax planned to be implemented in South Korea in 2027 is implemented as scheduled, and the restrictions on corporate transactions continue to be relaxed, the retail dominated pattern in the South Korean market may face a reassessment. [Original link]