Singapore's crypto economy expanded 55.4% to $284 billion, with activity on institutional platforms nearly doubling, according to new figures. The growth puts the city-state at odds with the rest of the region, where crypto activity contracted over the same stretch.
The surge wasn't uniform. Institutional trading and custody desks accounted for most of it, with that segment of the market up 94%. Meanwhile, retail users in the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam kept to smaller peer-to-peer transfers rather than the larger exchange-based flows that once defined the region.
Institutions carry the load
Singapore's numbers rest heavily on professional money. The 94% jump in institutional-platform activity means banks, funds and trading firms were the ones moving the needle, not retail users chasing tokens. That's a different shape than the region's last cycle, when consumer volumes often led the way.
It also explains how the total could grow so much even as neighboring markets pulled back. Institutional flows are fewer in number and larger in size, so they can lift a headline figure without a matching rise in day-to-day user activity.
The Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam go small
Those three markets stood out for one shared trait: small-value P2P transfers. Users in each are moving modest sums directly between wallets rather than through centralized venues. The pattern suggests remittance-style use and everyday payments remain the main draw in those countries, even during a broader regional contraction.
That divergence matters for anyone watching Southeast Asia as a single market. It isn't one. Singapore is doing institutional business while its neighbors do peer-to-peer business, and the two trends can point in opposite directions at the same time.
A regional split, not a regional rally
The contraction across the rest of Southeast Asia is the part that's easy to gloss over. Singapore's 55.4% gain is real, but it came while the wider region shrank. A single strong market can mask weakness elsewhere, and here it plainly does.
How much of Singapore's growth is new money versus activity simply relocating from other jurisdictions is an open question. The figures show where trades settled, not where the people behind them are based.
Next on the calendar: regional regulators and exchanges will have to reconcile these two directions. If institutional desks keep expanding in Singapore while P2P volumes hold steady in the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam, the region's crypto map will look less like a bloc and more like a set of separate markets with separate rules of gravity.
