AI Coins Flip XRP in South Korea, Worldcoin (WLD) Leads the Surge

AI tokens have become the largest thematic category in South Korea. Worldcoin (WLD) accounts for the lion’s share of the $7.41 billion in trading volume within the category, according to the latest Chainalysis East Asia Crypto Adoption report.

According to Chainalysis data, South Korea’s $449.1 billion crypto economy is the largest in East Asia. It grew 12.3% between January 2025 and June 2026, when the research was conducted.

In June, AI tokens were the largest thematic category in won-denominated trading activity on South Korean exchanges, accounting for an 18% share and overtaking payment tokens such as XRP, which accounted for 15%. The share of AI token trading in South Korea was 19.5 times higher than in Japan, the second-largest crypto market in East Asia, at $228.3 billion.

Worldcoin (WLD) was the single-largest token, with $7.41 billion in trading volume. Newcomer token SAHARA contributed $3.2 billion, VIRTUAL $2.7 billion, BIO $2 billion, and NEAR $1.7 billion.

The leaders have changed since 2025, when VIRTUAL and KAITO dominated the category, suggesting that retail traders are rapidly shifting their preferences.

Despite AI-related tokens taking the top spot by trading volume, XRP remains one of the most actively traded cryptocurrencies in South Korea. 

Korean traders have long favored XRP: it was the most-traded asset on Upbit in 2025 by annual trading value, ahead of Bitcoin, Ethereum, Tether, and Dogecoin, according to Upbit operator Dunamu.

The pattern has continued in 2026: XRP’s won trading pair out-traded Bitcoin on Upbit through late September. Upbit handled roughly 70% of Korean crypto trading volume in 2025, according to Kaiko.

Chainalysis experts attribute the interest in AI-linked crypto tokens to two factors.

First, South Korea is a famously retail-driven market, and much of the growth is occurring without major financial institutions entering the market. These institutions have been slow to adopt crypto at scale because of legislative roadblocks.

The retail market tends to favor high-risk, high-reward opportunities, while trading volumes for AI tokens are rising in parallel with the AI-related stock trend in the equity market. South Korea’s mainstream stock market is dominated by companies such as SK Hynix, which produces the memory chips fueling the data center boom.

Second, South Korea had no crypto tax in place during the period covered by the 2026 research, while institutions are only beginning to participate. A long-delayed 22% tax on crypto profits is scheduled to take effect at the start of 2027, but the legislature has delayed it before and could do so again, according to Chainalysis.

Meanwhile, institutional investors are only beginning to enter the market. In February 2025, the Financial Services Commission announced a roadmap to open the market to nonprofits, exchanges, listed companies, and registered professional investment corporations. However, investment-driven corporate participation has yet to scale in practice.