Every year, millions of Filipino workers abroad send money home to support families, pay tuition, or fund small businesses. In 2024, those remittances reached a record $38.34 billion, equivalent to about 8.5% of the country’s gross domestic product. For decades, that flow of money has relied on banks and money-transfer firms that charge fees averaging 6% to 7% and often take days to settle.

From Remittance Counters to Crypto Rails

A quiet shift is now underway. Instead of waiting in line at remittance counters or absorbing high fees, a growing number of Filipinos are using cryptocurrencies—particularly dollar-backed stablecoins—to move money across borders in minutes and at a fraction of the cost. In the process, the Philippines is emerging as one of the world’s most active test cases for crypto not as a speculative asset, but as financial infrastructure.

By several measures, the country already ranks among the global leaders in crypto adoption. Industry trackers place the Philippines in or near the top 10 worldwide, with roughly 13.4% of the population—about 16 million people—estimated to own some form of digital asset. The domestic crypto market is valued at roughly ₱6 trillion, or about $107 billion, as of early 2025. But the more revealing story is not about trading volumes or price cycles. It is about how digital assets are being used to solve an old, expensive problem: sending money home.

Stablecoins as the New Plumbing

Stablecoins such as USDT and USDC, which are designed to track the value of the U.S. dollar, have become the backbone of this emerging remittance rail. An overseas worker can convert local currency into a stablecoin, send it to the Philippines almost instantly, and have it cashed out or spent through local platforms. In many cases, total costs fall below 1%, compared with the 6% to 7% typical of traditional channels. Settlement times shrink from days to minutes.

This practical use case helps explain why crypto adoption in the Philippines looks different from that in many Western markets. While trading and speculation remain part of the picture, the dominant driver is utility. The country’s large overseas workforce, its high smartphone penetration, and its already digital-heavy payments ecosystem—about 57% of retail transactions are now digital—have made crypto a natural extension of existing financial behavior.

The Regulated Layer Takes Shape

That demand has given rise to a growing layer of licensed, regulated infrastructure. The Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) has approved a small group of virtual asset service providers, or VASPs, to operate under its supervision. Coins.ph, the first to receive a license in 2017, serves millions of users and recently piloted PHPC, the country’s first peso-pegged stablecoin backed by cash and cash equivalents. PDAX, licensed in 2018, powers the “GCrypto” feature inside GCash, giving tens of millions of wallet users in-app access to digital assets. Maya, originally an e-wallet and digital bank, now integrates crypto trading into its broader financial app. Smaller players such as BloomX and SurgePay focus on business-to-business remittances or hybrid payment services.

Together, these firms represent what regulators envision as the compliant future of the market: platforms with local incorporation, capital requirements, know-your-customer checks, and anti-money laundering controls, all connected to the Philippines’ banking and payments rails.

The Parallel P2P Market

But alongside this licensed tier sits a much larger, harder-to-measure parallel system. Global exchanges such as Binance, Bybit, and OKX do not operate local Philippine entities, yet their peer-to-peer (P2P) marketplaces facilitate billions of pesos in trades each month. These platforms allow users to buy and sell stablecoins directly with one another using local payment methods such as GCash, bank transfers, or even cash pickup services. For many users, especially those moving remittance-sized amounts, P2P channels are faster, cheaper, and more liquid than regulated alternatives.

This split became more visible in December 2025, when Philippine authorities ordered telecommunications firms to block access to around 50 unregistered crypto platforms, including well-known global names. The move was widely seen as the most aggressive enforcement action the country had taken against offshore exchanges. Regulators said any platform serving Filipinos without registration was operating illegally.

Yet the blocks did not eliminate demand. Many users continued to access global platforms through workarounds or shifted more activity to P2P channels that are harder to police.

Regulation, Friction, and the Cost of “Doing It Right”

The enforcement push has also raised a more uncomfortable question for policymakers: whether current rules are reducing risk for Filipinos, or simply reintroducing the same cost and friction that made remittances expensive in the first place. For overseas workers sending home a few hundred dollars at a time, the appeal of stablecoins is not ideological but practical lower fees and faster settlement. When access to global platforms is restricted, users do not stop sending money. They look for workarounds, shift to peer-to-peer channels, or absorb higher costs through the regulated system.

This has turned regulation itself into part of the economic debate. Supporters of stricter oversight argue it is necessary to protect consumers, enforce anti-money laundering rules, and prevent fraud. Critics counter that if compliance frameworks are too slow, too narrow, or too costly to navigate, the practical effect is to tax speed and efficiency out of a technology that was adopted precisely because it removed them. In a country where remittances account for nearly a tenth of economic output, the design of those rules is no longer just a legal question, but a household finance issue.

The Philippine experience suggests the real challenge is not choosing between control and chaos, but aligning oversight with how money actually moves in a mobile-first, cross-border economy. Stablecoins and peer-to-peer rails have already set a new baseline for what “fast” and “cheap” look like. The risk for regulators is that if formal channels cannot meet that baseline, activity will continue to route around them, leaving the system both less visible and harder to supervise.

A Tightening Policy Framework

BSP has maintained a moratorium on new VASP licenses since 2022, limiting the number of approved operators to about 13. The Securities and Exchange Commission has introduced rules requiring crypto firms offering securities-like products to have at least ₱100 million in paid-up capital and a physical presence in the country. The Philippines has also committed to implementing the OECD’s Crypto-Asset Reporting Framework by 2028, which will increase tax and compliance reporting on cross-border crypto holdings.

At the same time, the government has signaled support for selected innovations. The pilot launch of PHPC, the peso-backed stablecoin built on Hedera Hashgraph, reflects an attempt to bring some of the efficiency of stablecoin rails into a framework overseen by the central bank. Coins.ph has said the project is aimed in part at reducing remittance friction and improving domestic settlement efficiency.

This mix of encouragement and enforcement has produced a policy landscape that some in the industry describe as contradictory: innovation in certain areas, strict limits in others. But from a broader perspective, it reflects a familiar challenge for regulators worldwide, how to integrate fast-moving digital financial tools into systems designed for slower, more centralized institutions.

How the Philippines Compares in Southeast Asia

Regionally, the Philippines is not alone in grappling with these questions. Vietnam leads the world in grassroots crypto adoption, despite lacking a comprehensive legal framework. Thailand has built a more formal licensing regime and even approved Bitcoin exchange-traded funds for institutions. Singapore has positioned itself as an institutional hub with strict oversight and no capital gains tax. What sets the Philippines apart is the centrality of remittances, and the scale at which everyday users are already treating crypto as plumbing rather than a bet.

More Than an Asset Class

For overseas workers and their families, the appeal is straightforward: lower fees, faster transfers, and round-the-clock availability. For the financial system, the implications are larger. If stablecoin rails continue to grow, they could reshape how money moves into and within one of Asia’s most remittance-dependent economies.

Whether regulators can bring this activity fully into the formal system without breaking the efficiencies that made it attractive in the first place remains an open question. What is already clear is that in the Philippines, crypto’s most important role may not be as a new asset class, but as a new way to move money.

‍