Report contents
APAC · Frontier
Myanmar
Crypto Livability Index 2025·data to 31 Dec 2025
Scoreboard
Five pillars, then the 22 sub-pillars scored 0 to 4. Empty sub-scores are held out of the total, not zeroed.
The number behind the rank
| Raw capability score | 16 / 84 |
| P2P liquidity bonus (tie-breaker) | +2 |
| Inflation 25.8% · unbanked 77% · remittances 3.2% GDP · capital controls 0.84 · sanctions 0.5 | CNI 0.550 |
| Need multiplier | ×1.325 |
| Livability score | 0.253 |
Raw 16/84 = 0.190 capability. Crypto-Necessity Index 0.55, from five components: inflation 25.8% (three-year average 2023 to 2025), unbanked 77% of adults, remittances 3.2% of GDP, capital-control intensity 0.84 (KAOPEN 2023), sanctions exposure 0.5. Need multiplier ×1.32. Livability score 0.253, rank #73 of 79.
Three findings
The highest need score in the region, sitting on a banned and broken financial system
Myanmar's Crypto-Necessity Index is 0.55, the region's highest: inflation averaged 25.8%, 77% of adults are unbanked, and it carries a sanctions exposure of 0.5. The junta's central bank reaffirmed its total ban as recently as 16 November 2025, six weeks before the cutoff, yet the demand pressure underneath that ban is the most acute the index measures in Asia.
A ban from one government, legal tender from another
Crypto law in Myanmar is split between two authorities: the military council, which criminalises all activity under Directive 9/2020, and the internationally recognised opposition National Unity Government, which declared USDT legal tender in the territories it controls in December 2021. That contradiction is why legal status scores 1, a partial ban, rather than a clean zero.
P2P is a survival rail, not a speculative one
USDT on Tron rose roughly 300% since 2022 as the kyat collapsed, moving through cash, QR and Telegram, and the junta's requirement that workers remit at least 25% through official channels at below-market rates actively pushes the diaspora in Thailand and Malaysia toward stablecoins. Bank account closures are routine, with over 200 shut in a single week in 2024.
In one line
"In Myanmar one government bans the stablecoin and the other accepts it as legal tender. For a family watching the kyat collapse, USDT is not a position to trade. It is the money that still works."
Watch in 2026
Trajectory 0/4, actively tightening. The junta's central bank reissued its total-ban warning on 16 November 2025, closed more than 200 crypto-linked bank accounts in a single 2024 week, and formed a central-bank digital-currency committee in June 2025 to consolidate monetary control rather than open the market. The direction is further enforcement, not liberalisation.