Spoiler alert: 2025’s top country didn’t even make the list eight years ago, and 2017’s winner now falls outside the top 10.
The United Arab Emirates ranks first in 2025, marking an eight-year reshuffle in the jurisdictions attracting digital-asset activity.
The UAE’s rise has been built on purpose-built regulators in Dubai and Abu Dhabi and onshore zones that let firms obtain a single, comprehensible rule set. Individuals face no personal income tax and corporate structures can be organized in free zones that publish crypto licenses and compliance guides, giving companies a path to operate at scale.
Switzerland remains near the top on the back of long-running “Crypto Valley” infrastructure, stable banking interfaces for token issuers and custody firms, and a known posture from the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority.
The city-state’s lack of a capital-gains tax for individuals further reduces friction for staff options and liquidity events.
Canada’s standing reflects a track record of approving crypto exchange-traded products and supervisory guidance for platforms under provincial regulators.
Singapore and Hong Kong do not levy capital-gains taxes on individuals, and the UAE’s personal tax regime continues to be a draw for founders and market-making teams.
The other side of the ledger shows how early momentum can ebb as frameworks tighten or market structure changes.
South Korea’s 2024 Virtual Asset User Protection Act brought broader oversight, market-abuse rules, and incident-reporting thresholds.
Those flows put the United States near the top for overall adoption even as retail-focused metrics favor India, which leads in grassroots usage.
Asia-Pacific accounts for more than one-third of global market share and remains the fastest-expanding region by activity in Chainalysis’ datasets, driven by exchange hubs in Singapore and Hong Kong and volume out of India and Vietnam.
The eight-year comparison makes the through line clear. Jurisdictions that produce a single door for licensing, publish tax treatments that finance teams can model, and integrate banks, custodians, and market surveillance into the rulebook are the ones attracting scale.
The UAE, Switzerland, Singapore, Hong Kong, Canada, and the United States now anchor that cohort. Countries that pulled back or reoriented toward broader financial-crime controls have ceded ground, with Estonia, Japan, South Korea, the Netherlands, and Russia reshaped by those choices.
The result is a map that rewards regulatory maturity and institutional access rather than early-stage experimentation.
