UAE follows as Turkey leads 2025 MENA crypto adoption index

In Chainalysis’ recent MENA crypto adoption report 2025, MENA saw crypto growth rates 33% lower than previous years, as crypto usage lagged behind in the APAC (69%) and Latin America (63%) ￰0￱ surged to the top of crypto transaction volumes in region, followed by the UAE and Egypt among ￰1￱ topped the regional index, with nearly $200 billion in annual transactions, four times that of the UAE, which took second place at $53 ￰2￱ behind the UAE is Egypt, which witnessed around $48 billion of crypto annual transactions, followed by Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and ￰3￱ MENA countries by crypto value received.) and mid-sized transactions ($1 million to $10 million), has seen more modest decelerations in ￰4￱ the retail bracket, professional traders ($10,000 to $1 million) have experienced a decline from 41.6% growth to just 4.1%, a nearly 90% reduction in their growth ￰5￱ the retail end, there has been an even more dramatic reversal in participation, with large retail ($1,000 to $10,000) and small retail (under $1,000) transactions shifting from healthy positive growth to a 1.6% and 2.3% contraction, ￰6￱ interpreted those changes as evidence of reduced disposable income among the retail segment for crypto investment or a shift in ￰7￱ also might be a reflection of Turkey’s crypto regulatory framework and stronger alignment with FATF ￰8￱ this, a look at the 31-day transactions count on Turkish crypto exchanges showed that in late 2024, there was a surge in altcoin volumes ($50 million), peaking above $250 million by ￰9￱ crypto growth slowed in 2024-2025 but still steady While the UAE took second place in the Chainalysis crypto adoption MENA 2025 report, the growth had slowed from 86.4% in the 2023-2024 period to 33% in the 2024-2025 period.

Interestingly, while the biggest growth in the UAE is driven by institutional transactions and transfers (54.75%) and (37.2%) respectively, there has been extraordinary growth across the merchant services category in retail segments, with small retail ( UAE period-over-period crypto transaction growth by transfer sizes.