Report contents
APAC · Emerging
Philippines
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 | 61 / 84 |
| P2P liquidity bonus (tie-breaker) | +4 |
| Inflation 3.6% · unbanked 50% · remittances 8.7% GDP · capital controls 0.55 · sanctions 0 | CNI 0.295 |
| Need multiplier | ×0.942 |
| Livability score | 0.684 |
Raw 61/84 = 0.726 capability. Crypto-Necessity Index 0.29, from five components: inflation 3.6% (three-year average 2023 to 2025), unbanked 50% of adults, remittances 8.7% of GDP, capital-control intensity 0.55 (KAOPEN 2023), sanctions exposure 0. Need multiplier ×0.94. Livability score 0.684, rank #7 of 79.
Three findings
Need lifts the Philippines 16 places, into the global top ten
The country ranks #23 on raw capability but #7 once need is applied, because the rails meet real demand: half of adults are unbanked, remittances run 8.7% of GDP, and roughly 6% of Filipinos hold crypto, heavily for overseas-worker transfers. This is a high-capability market built on top of genuine structural necessity, the inverse of the mature markets that score high but need little.
One of the cleanest remittance-corridor cases in the world
Against a 40.2 billion dollar overseas-worker remittance base, the peso-pegged stablecoin PHPC (launched June 2025) and a BSP-regulated exchange framework make this the most institutionalised crypto-remittance corridor in Southeast Asia. The Coins.ph and BCRemit stablecoin rail cut fees from roughly 6% to near 1%, and Coins.ph processed nearly 30 billion pesos in QRPh transactions in December 2025 alone.
The most aggressive enforcement crackdown of any APAC market in 2024 to 2025
Telecom regulators ordered ISPs to block 50 unlicensed platforms, including Coinbase, Gemini, OKX and Kraken in December 2025, and the central bank extended its exchange-licensing moratorium indefinitely from September 2025. The country's global adoption ranking fell from 2nd in 2022 to 9th in 2025 even as the rails kept working.
In one line
"For millions of Filipino families, crypto is not a trade. It is the cheapest way a parent working abroad can put money in a child's hands the same day, and the country has built the rails to prove it."
Watch in 2026
Trajectory 1/4, actively tightening. The licensing moratorium that froze new exchange approvals since September 2022 was extended indefinitely from September 2025, the securities regulator's new rules impose a 100 million peso paid-up capital floor, and in December 2025 telecom regulators ordered ISPs to block 50 unlicensed platforms. The direction through the cutoff is regulated tightening within a legal market, not movement toward a ban.