Invest1 publisher2 min readPublished
Circle's $400m for Tazapay tops half of Southeast Asia's crypto funding year
Tracxn counts 25 rounds worth $680 million in the region in 2026 against 46 rounds worth $319 million a year before, so money per round nearly quadrupled while 21 fewer rounds got done. Singapore holds 82.5 per cent of the all-time total.
The Investor · Invest desk
What happened
- Tracxn recorded 25 crypto funding rounds worth $680 million in Southeast Asia in 2026, up from $319 million a year earlier, according to Cointelegraph's Asia Express column.
- The regional deal count came down to 25 from 46 the year before, so the dollars doubled while 21 fewer rounds were completed.
- OFAC designated scam marketplace Xinbi Guarantee a significant transnational criminal organisation and sanctioned Singapore-based SafeW Technology for allegedly supporting it.
Compiled by The InvestorSomething wrong?How this is made
Why it matters
- decision A founder picking a domicile is choosing between 82.5 per cent of the region's tracked equity money and the 17.5 per cent left for everywhere else, and that arithmetic decides where the holding company gets incorporated before the first term sheet.
- constraint At 25 rounds a year the regional total is thin enough that one large raise sets the $27.2 million average, so the doubling cannot be used as evidence that early-stage capital got easier to raise in Jakarta or Ho Chi Minh City.
- contradiction Cointelegraph reads the Tracxn numbers as more money going to fewer companies, and the report carries no country split for the 25 rounds, so the concentration is visible in round size but not yet demonstrated as a Singapore capture.
- exposure Holding 2,285 registered blockchain companies also puts Singapore addresses inside US enforcement files, and SafeW's designation reaches the counterparties and banks that dealt with it.
Tracxn's $680 million across 25 rounds works out at $27.2 million each, and the previous year's $319 million across 46 rounds works out at $6.9 million [1][2][1][2]. That is close to four times more per round, on 21 fewer rounds [3][4]. In dollars the region grew 2.13 times [5].
Singapore holds 2,285 of the 3,957 blockchain companies Tracxn counts, or 57.8 per cent, and 82.5 per cent of all-time blockchain equity funding tracked there [4][5][6]. Per company that is about 3.5 times as much money behind a Singapore registration as behind one anywhere else in the region, comparing 82.5 over 57.8 with 17.5 over 42.2 [7]. The column calls Singapore Asia's pre-eminent crypto hub and then counts companies "in the entire region" without saying which region that is [4].
Tracxn does not say who took the 25 rounds. The 82.5 per cent is a stock built over years, and the 2026 flow is not broken out by country [1][5].
The largest single cheque in the material is an acquisition. Circle agreed to pay $400 million for Singapore's Tazapay, which is 59 per cent of the region's entire 2026 funding total [6][8]. Add Webull Securities' completed $100 million purchase of Pi Securities in Thailand and those two acquisitions come to $500 million, 74 per cent of the venture number [7][9]. Both targets were already licensed and connected: Tazapay with more than 60 bank and fintech partners across 100 markets, Pi Securities a long-established securities and investment services firm [6][7].
Buying a licensed firm is one route. Gemini waited for the licence. Its Major Payment Institution licence from the Monetary Authority of Singapore closed an in-principle approval granted nearly two years earlier, and MPI status lifts the transaction-volume limits that apply to standard payment institutions [8][9]. Gemini has served customers in Singapore since 2020, according to president and co-founder Cameron Winklevoss [10].
At 25 rounds the sample is small enough that one unnamed large raise sets the average [1]. Larger rounds can also mean surviving companies raising later-stage money, in which case the fall is attrition among last year's 46 [2].
Singapore's registry turns up in the enforcement copy too. OFAC designated scam marketplace Xinbi Guarantee a significant transnational criminal organisation and sanctioned Singapore-based SafeW Technology for allegedly supporting it, while US authorities restrained more than $52 million in crypto across the network, including about $12 million in two wallets seized by the Justice Department's Scam Center Strike Force, with restraints sought against 47 more [11][12][13].
What to watch
- A country-level split of the 25 rounds would settle whether Singapore took the 2026 money or only holds the all-time stock.
- Whether Tracxn's 2026 total is a completed year, and how much it moves when revised.
- Further OFAC designations touching Singapore-registered firms, which would put a compliance price on the 2,285 registrations.