Nearly a quarter of adults with internet access in the Asia Pacific region may own cryptocurrencies, a report jointly prepared by Protocol Theory and CoinDesk said on Friday.
The report, based on a survey of 4,020 people in 10 different countries and extrapolated across the broader APAC region, further suggests that lack of access to traditional financial services is driving crypto adoption. Meanwhile, stable coins are adopted by about 18% of adults with internet access in the region’s emerging markets.
CoinDesk Consensus: How fast adoption continues to grow will depend on how easy it is to use digital assets in everyday life, said the report, published ahead of the Hong Kong conference next February.
“APAC Digital Asset Adoption 2025 finds that participation is now shaped by usability, integration and inclusion rather than speculation,” the report said. “Stablecoins, remittances and tokenized assets are emerging as the practical foundations of a digital economy that operates across borders and devices, supported by a regulatory framework designed to enable rather than restrict participation.”
According to the survey, the report states that half of adults aware of cryptocurrency intend to use it in the next year or so, despite modest adoption in the past year. The survey was conducted in India, Thailand, Philippines, South Korea, Hong Kong, Singapore, China, Australia and Japan, with the UAE included as a comparable market. About 400 people were surveyed from each country. It also focuses on adults aged 18 to 64 who have access to the internet and have heard of crypto before.
The report said one reason for the slow adoption may be that traditional financial services – digital bank accounts, remittances, even bill payments – are relatively easy to implement across the region compared to “the complexity of wallets, exchanges and token transfers.”
However, the report notes that an evolving regulatory regime in various countries is enabling growth and adoption.
The report said more than 70% of adults in emerging economies – such as the UAE, India, China, the Philippines and Thailand – say regulations are important. That figure drops to around 66% in places like Hong Kong, Australia and Singapore, and below 50% in Japan.
“This divergence reflects different stages of market confidence. In emerging economies, regulation fills an institutional gap – acting as a proxy for trust and signaling that participation is legitimate,” the report said.
“In mature markets, where comprehensive consumer protections already exist, regulation serves less as a bridge to access and more as a means of risk management.”