This is my keynote presentation on the State of Crypto Markets in Asia presented during CoinDesk Invest: Asia conference in Singapore on 11 September 2019. In this presentation, I explained how the centre of gravity in crypto has shifted to Asia. Asia now dominates the mining pool/validator space, exchange market, ICO/IEO, and is now innovating at a very rapid pace.

1. State of Crypto Markets in Asia
11 September 2019
Invest: Asia 2019
Bobby Ong
Co-founder, CoinGecko

2. 2
CoinGecko in Malaysia
(2014-Present)

3. Asia is Now Leading Growth
in Crypto Markets
3

4. 4
The Asia Crypto Growth Story
+
Large Young Population
Love for Speculation & High Returns
+
Lack of Interesting Equities Market
Non-Restrictive Regulatory Climate
Exchange Competition & Innovation
+
=
+
Asia Crypto Growth Story

5. The Asia Crypto Growth Story
5
1. Asia plays a major role in mining pools & validators
2. Asia has seen a huge increase in crypto exchanges
3. Competition is driving innovations from Asia

6. 1. Asia Miners & Validators
6

7. 7
Source: https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/184427-one-bitcoin-group-now-controls-51-of-total-mining-power-threatening-entire-currencys-safety
Data snapshot on 16 June 2014
Bitcoin Hashrate Distribution (June 2014)
Discus Fish (F2Pool) was the only
Asian Bitcoin mining pool
1
Large Asian mining pool

8. Trivia 1
Among the top 10 Bitcoin mining pools,
how many of them are from Asia?
8

9. 9
Source: https://btc.com/stats/pool?pool_mode=month
Data snapshot on 2 August 2019 (Rolling 1 month data)
Bitcoin Hashrate Distribution (August 2019)
● Only 2 of 10 largest mining
pools are non-Chinese -
SlushPool and Bitfury
● Bitmain owns BTC.com,
AntPool directly and ViaBTC
indirectly for total combined
hash rate of 40%
80%
Dominated by
Chinese Mining Pools

10. Ethereum Hashrate Distribution (May 2016)
10

11. 11
Source: https://twitter.com/jonmatonis/status/736539133342949376
Data snapshot on 28 May 2016
Ethereum Hashrate Distribution (May 2016)
F2Pool and Miningpoolhub
were the only Asia-based
Ethereum mining pools with
total hashrate of 12.2%
2
Asian mining pools

12. 12
Source: https://etherscan.io/stat/miner?blocktype=blocks
Data snapshot on 2 August 2019 (Rolling 7 days data)
Ethereum Hashrate Distribution (August 2019)
Unknown
Unknown
Unknown
● 6 out of top 10 mining pools
are Asian operated
● Ethereum mining is more
decentralized
49%
Dominated by
Asian Mining Pools

13. EOS Block Producers Distribution
13

14. 14Source: https://eospark.com/
Data snapshot on 3 August 2019
EOS Block Producers Distribution (August 2019)
80%
● 18 out of 21 EOS Block Producers
are from China
● Most EOS Block Producers are
Chinese operated but carrying a
different Country of Registration
Chinese EOS Block Producers

15. Asians Love Making
15
But less so when it comes to decentralization of network

16. 16
Source: https://bitnodes.earn.com/
Data snapshot on 7 August 2019
Bitcoin Nodes Distribution
14%
Bitcoin nodes running
out of Asia
● US leads with 2,375 out
of 9,624 Bitcoin nodes
operating globally (24%)
● China (406), Singapore
(313), Japan (191), Hong
Kong (173) leads Asia.

17. ● US leads with 2,219 out of 6,859
Ethereum nodes operating globally
(31%)
● China (769), Singapore (342), South
Korea (291) Japan (277) leads Asia.
17
Source: https://etherscan.io/nodetracker
Data snapshot on 14 August 2019
Ethereum Nodes Distribution
24%
Ethereum nodes running
out of Asia

18. 2. Crypto Exchanges
18

19. 706%
Increase in new exchanges
integrated since 2018
New Exchanges on CoinGecko
19
Number of
Exchanges
45
July 2019
363
318 new exchanges tracked on
CoinGecko from
1 Jan 2018 to 31 July 2019

20. New Exchanges on CoinGecko
20* Active new exchanges added on CoinGecko from 1 Jan 2018 to 31 July 2019
** Exchanges that do not provide public information on county of registration are classified as “Not Specified”
40%
New exchanges are
from Asia
Many Asia-based exchanges
incorporated in Malta,
Seychelles, Cayman Islands,
British Virgin Islands

21. No Exchange Country Trading Volume
1 $ 922,517
2 $ 637,873
3 $ 448,014
4 $ 289,467
5 $ 246,781
6 $ 223,127
7 $ 213,842
8 $ 184,339
9 $ 100,128
10 $ 79,542
21Snapshot Date: 6 August 2014
* Country of registration is obtained based on best effort basis based on publicly available information.
Trading volumes were low
and more decentralized.
70%Top 10 Exchanges
No Longer Exist
Top 10 Spot Exchanges by Reported Volume (August 2014)

22. Trivia 2
What is Binance’s rank in terms of
reported trading volume on 31 July 2019?
22

23. No Exchange Country Trading Volume
11 $ 1,038 mil
12 $ 990 mil
13 $ 984 mil
14 $ 966 mil
15 $ 933 mil
16 $ 907 mil
17 $ 871 mil
18 $ 835 mil
19 $ 832 mil
20 $ 824 mil
No Exchange Country Trading Volume
1 $ 12,530 mil
2 $ 2,230 mil
3 $ 2,156 mil
4 $1,457 mil
5 $1,332 mil
6 $ 1,244 mil
7 $ 1,180 mil
8 $ 1,168 mil
9 $ 1,071 mil
10 $ 1,064 mil
23
$966 million
Binance Reported Trading Vol
Binance is only in
position #14
Top 20 Spot Exchanges by Reported Volume (31 July 2019)

24. No Exchange Country Trading Volume
11 $ 1,038 mil
12 $ 990 mil
13 $ 984 mil
14 $ 966 mil
15 $ 933 mil
16 $ 907 mil
17 $ 871 mil
18 $ 835 mil
19 $ 832 mil
20 $ 824 mil
No Exchange Country Trading Volume
1 $ 12,530 mil
2 $ 2,230 mil
3 $ 2,156 mil
4 $1,457 mil
5 $1,332 mil
6 $ 1,244 mil
7 $ 1,180 mil
8 $ 1,168 mil
9 $ 1,071 mil
10 $ 1,064 mil
24
$12.5 billion
#1 in Reported Trading Vol
Bitmax has 13x more
trading volume than
Binance!
Top 20 Spot Exchanges by Reported Volume (31 July 2019)

25. Trans-Fee Mining
Rebate offered by exchange in the form of exchange tokens
for any trading fee that has been incurred
25

26. No Exchange Country Trading Volume
11 $ 1,038 mil
12 $ 990 mil
13 $ 984 mil
14 $ 966 mil
15 $ 933 mil
16 $ 907 mil
17 $ 871 mil
18 $ 835 mil
19 $ 832 mil
20 $ 824 mil
No Exchange Country Trading Volume
1 $ 12,530 mil
2 $ 2,230 mil
3 $ 2,156 mil
4 $1,457 mil
5 $1,332 mil
6 $ 1,244 mil
7 $ 1,180 mil
8 $ 1,168 mil
9 $ 1,071 mil
10 $ 1,064 mil
26* Country of registration is obtained based on best effort basis based on publicly available information.
Reported Trading
Volume is no longer a
good indicator!
Top 20 Spot Exchanges by Reported Volume (31 July 2019)

27. How do we solve it?
27

28. 28
High Volume → More Traders → More Web Tra c
Trading Volume Proxy

29. No Exchange Country
Normalized
Volume
Reported
Volume
11 $ 50 mil $ 1,244 mil
12 $ 43 mil $ 638 mil
13 $ 38 mil $ 907 mil
14 $ 34 mil $ 794 mil
15 $ 32 mil $ 32 mil
16 $ 30 mil $ 681 mil
17 $ 28 mil $ 871 mil
18 $ 28 mil $ 28 mil
19 $ 28 mil $ 28 mil
20 $ 25 mil $ 25 mil
No Exchange Country
NormalIzed
Volume
Reported
Volume
1 $ 966 mil $ 966 mil
2 $ 250 mil $ 250 mil
3 $ 167 mil $ 167 mil
4 $ 134 mil $159 mil
5 $ 95 mil $ 1,064 mil
6 $ 92 mil $ 765 mil
7 $ 92 mil $ 120 mil
8 $ 80 mil $ 788 mil
9 $ 64 mil $ 81 mil
10 $ 63 mil $ 208 mil
29
Trading volume normalized
by web traffic estimates
CoinGecko
Trust Score
Top 20 Spot Exchanges by Normalized Volume (31 July 2019)

30. With Binance classified as an Asia Pacific
exchange, Asia’s market share of
normalized trading volume is 58%.
Normalized Trading Volume by Region (31 July 2019)
30Data snapshot: 31 July 2019
* Exchanges that do not provide public information on county of registration are shown as “Not Specified”
$1,854 mil (58%)
Asia Pacific’s Trading Volume
$1,854m
$270m $311m
$141m
$470m
$1.0m
$100m

31. Exchange Regulations
31
in search of
favourable regulations

32. 32
China and India has banned crypto exchanges, ICO and various aspects of crypto.
What would you do as a Chinese or Indian crypto entrepreneur?
Exchange Regulations

33. 33
Japan
●
● Regulations in place since September 2017
● Many M&A activities with large corporations
getting involved such as Rakuten, SBI, and
Yahoo! Japan (Taotao)
● The maximum leverage has been lowered to
4x for margin trading
19
Regulated Japanese Exchanges
Exchange Regulations

34. South East Asian regulators are very progressive!
34
Malaysia
Thailand
Brokerage
Philippines
Securities exchange
regulated by Labuan FSA
Regulated by Malaysia SC
ABA Global Philippines Inc.
Regulated by Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP)
37 crypto exchange operators licensed by Cagayan Economic
Zone Authority (CEZA). Open only to foreigners and can only
provide services to non-Philippines residents.
Exchange Regulations

35. 35
3. Innovations in Asia

36. Trivia 3
Which is the most popular country
for ICO / IEO fundraising?
36

37. Singapore is a global hub for
ICO issuance.
● Singapore led the world
followed by the US, UK and
Estonia.
● Switzerland is only the 6th
most popular jurisdiction.
● $1.6 billion raised by 228
Singapore-based ICOs
37
2018 ICO Market Overview
# of
ICOs

38. 38
● 72 IEOs took place in H1 2019, raising a
total of $262 million
● 39% of IEOs took place in Singapore
raising a total of $130 million
● 65% of IEOs took place in Asia raising a
total of $186 million
● Asian based exchanges such as Gate,
Bitforex, Binance, Kucoin, Huobi were
most aggressive in launching IEOs
# of
IEOs
H1 2019 IEO Market Overview

39. Who started the exchange tokens trend?
39

40. 40
Binance made the following popular:
● BNB exchange token
● Launchpad / IEO model
Other innovations:
● Binance DEX
● Binance Chain
Innovations in Asia

41. Where did trans-fee mining come from?
41

42. 42
Trans-fee Mining
Fcoin shook up the exchange business
with trans-fee mining.
Methods are interesting but very
controversial. Tactic is is very popular in
Q3 2018 in Asia.
Innovations in Asia

43. Who are the largest crypto
derivative exchanges?
43

44. 44
Innovations in Asia
Bitmex and OKEx Futures lead the world in
crypto futures and perpetual swaps.
Other exchanges are now copying this model.
Expect more exchanges to offer derivatives.

45. 45
Bitmain
● Highly efficient ASIC hardware
● Expanded vertically in the
mining sector
● Crypto unicorn with public
listing coming soon
Innovations in Asia

46. Recap
46

47. The Asia Crypto Growth Story
47
1. Asia plays a major role in mining pools & validators
2. Asia has seen a huge increase in crypto exchanges
3. Competition is driving innovations from Asia

48. 48
Thank You
www.coingecko.com
48
Bobby Ong
Co-founder, CoinGecko
bobby@coingecko.com
Twitter / Telegram: @bobbyong