China has banned cryptocurrency. As one of the largest territories in Asia, one would think that the nation of China is setting the stones in place for a continent that has no desire or use for the world’s number one digital asset, but apparently, the situation has led to the exact opposite.
Asia Is Moving Ahead as a Crypto Haven
Despite China’s sudden hate for BTC, it looks like crypto activity in Asia has grown by more than 700 percent over the past few months, almost as though the rest of the region is working in retaliation for what China has done. According to a new report issued by blockchain analysis company Chainalysis, Southern and Central Asia and Oceania (CSAO) are currently part of the fourth largest crypto market in the world. As it stands, the crypto market in these regions is now worth approximately $572 billion.
The report states:
CSAO’s transaction activity grew by 706 percent compared to last year in terms of raw value, and its share of global cryptocurrency activity grew by two percent, making CSAO one of the fastest growing of all the regions we study.
It seems as if a region needs to be under duress or under threat that its crypto sector is going to be completely cut out for it to really see a massive surge in activity. For example, Chainalysis has put out a separate report claiming that India has seen its digital currency arena expand by more than 640 percent over the past year.
What’s ironic here is that India has been under threat from regulators who have basically been looking to pull what occurred in China. Several have hinted that they are discussing in Parliament the prospects of a full crypto ban, and this would ultimately turn India inside out.
In addition, Chainalysis comments that crypto activity increased by more than 700 percent in Pakistan as well. The company currently places the top three crypto countries in Asia as Vietnam, India, and Pakistan. The document states:
Interesting differences also emerge when we look at the breakdown of transaction value by currency. For instance, we see that Ethereum and wETH make up a bigger share of Indian activity than of Vietnamese or Pakistani activity.
Don’t Try and Stop Crypto
One of the big things that makes India stand out is that it is more active in the defi space and that it hosts more institutional crypto activity. According to the report:
Large institutional-sized transfers above $10 million worth of cryptocurrency represent 42 percent of transactions sent from India-based addresses, versus 28 percent for Pakistan and 29 percent for Vietnam. Those numbers suggest that India’s cryptocurrency investors are part of larger, more sophisticated organizations.
As it stands, the total number of crypto transactions in the region of CSAO accounts for approximately 14 percent of the country’s crypto transactions.