India falls to 6th in Chainalysis 2026 crypto adoption index
After three years at No. 1, India ranks sixth under a new method that weights activity by income. Brazil tops the list, and India is still 2nd for inflows.
India has lost the top spot in Chainalysis' Global Crypto Adoption Index after holding it for three straight years. The blockchain analytics firm's 2026 edition, released on 23 September, places India 6th among 117 countries. Brazil now leads, ahead of the United States, Nigeria, Japan and South Korea.
The method changed more than the market
Most of India's fall comes down to a new way of measuring adoption. This year Chainalysis scores each country on four measures: money flowing into crypto services, domestic peer-to-peer (P2P) transfers, cross-border transfers and on-chain balances. It combines them using a geometric mean, and it adjusts exchange traffic by the square root of GDP per capita, so activity in lower-income countries counts for less than it did.
The firm used India to show how that works. In June 2026, India and South Korea each made up about 8.1% of the traffic on one large exchange. Once the wealth adjustment was applied, India's share fell to 3.2% while South Korea's rose to 11.6%. The difference reflects per-capita incomes of $2,695 in India against $36,239 in South Korea.
India's strong and weak spots
- 2nd globally for total flows into crypto services.
- 3rd for on-chain balances.
- 16th for domestic P2P activity and 16th for cross-border transfers. These two weaker results dragged the overall ranking down.
A resilient global crypto economy
Across the world, the crypto economy shrank by only 1.6% to around $9.4 trillion in the 12 months to June 2026, even though total market capitalisation roughly halved over that time. Domestic P2P transfers climbed about 303%, and cross-border stablecoin flows grew 77.5%.
What it means for India
The new ranking highlights a gap between trading enthusiasm and everyday use. Indians put plenty of money into crypto platforms, but they move far less of it between people or across borders. India's tax regime is part of the story. A flat 30% tax on gains, 1% TDS on transfers and no loss set-off have driven a lot of activity offshore and made small crypto payments unattractive. Parliament has also yet to deliver clear rules for the sector. Whether India returns to the top of the index may depend as much on those policy choices as on how keen Indians are to use crypto.
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