The global crypto economy contracted by just 1.6 percent to $9.4 trillion in the twelve months to 30 June, according to Chainalysis, over a period in which total market capitalisation fell by about half, or $2.1 trillion. The figures come from the firm’s seventh annual geography report, published on Wednesday, which measures activity rather than prices: money flowing into exchanges and DeFi, domestic peer-to-peer transfers, cross-border flows and onchain balances.
The components moved in very different directions. Value flowing into exchanges and DeFi fell 4.3 percent to $8.9 trillion, and onchain balances roughly halved from $860 billion in September 2025 to $440 billion. Domestic peer-to-peer transfers, by contrast, rose 302.9 percent to $228.7 billion, and cross-border stablecoin flows grew 77.5 percent to $220.3 billion. Brazil topped the adoption index with a $252.5 billion crypto economy, ahead of the United States, Nigeria, Japan and South Korea.
The argument Chainalysis is making is that crypto is increasingly used to move money rather than to bet on it. Cross-border stablecoin payments averaging around $3,000 look more like remittances and small business settlement than trading, and Latin America’s crypto economy grew 9.8 percent to $593.8 billion while prices fell. Venezuela’s activity more than doubled to $39.1 billion.
The caveat is in the method. Chainalysis leaves out cross-border transfers it cannot confidently assign to a country, and describes its stablecoin figure as conservative for that reason, which also means the map of the fastest-growing category rests on attribution the firm cannot fully make. A fourfold rise in peer-to-peer transfers during a falling market is either real adoption or activity moving somewhere harder to see, and the report cannot say which.
