Crypto trading volume in Indonesia this year reached ~$50B by October, up over 10x YoY, despite the government and the Ulema Council forbidding crypto payments
Crypto is booming on the archipelago. Its proponents aren't who you'd think — Ananda Badudu is 32 years old … Tweets: @restofworld , @anxioushuxley , @blackamazon , @leomschwartz , @restofworld , and @lmatsakis Tweets: @restofworld : Crypto is booming in Indonesia, and some of its biggest fans are working class investors. “If we look the other way to challenge the status quo, there's hope within the crypto world,” said 32-year-old indie rocker Ananda Badudu, who so far has lost $1000 https://restofworld.org/... @anxioushuxley : Latest take for @restofworld on the recent surge of #crypto investment during the pandemic in Indonesia and the community behind it. With the amazing @megatobin1 and the keen eye of @sauteesquid. Pls have a read ⚡️🪙💻 🧑💻🖥 🤝 also feat. @anandabadudu. https://restofworld.org/... @blackamazon : I am really interested in these kind of stories about #crypto because so much of it is showing how when resources are committed yo design and access things move https://twitter.com/... Leo Schwartz / @leomschwartz : “In 2020, nearly $4.5 billion in crypto assets were traded in the country. By October this year, that shot up more than ten times to around $50 billion.” @megatobin1 and @anxioushuxley on the rise of low-cost crypto trading platforms in Indonesia: https://restofworld.org/... @restofworld : Like a lot of Indonesians, Ananda Badudu started trading crypto in the past year. After losing his savings in an insurance scam, “I didn't trust any type of conventional, centralized investment anymore,” he said. (He has so far lost $1000 in crypto) https://restofworld.org/... Louise Matsakis / @lmatsakis : Interesting story from @megatobin1 and @anxioushuxley about the rise of crypto trading in Indonesia, which increased from $4.5 billion to $50 billion *just in the last year* https://restofworld.org/...
Context & Ripple Effects
Indonesia spent years building a parallel track for Islamic finance: sharia-fintech startups stalled on exactly the compliance questions that keep digital payments halal, and the Ulema Council's payment ban is the doctrinal endpoint of that debate. The Islamic world's broader argument over whether crypto is gambling has not stopped Indonesian retail money from flowing in anyway.
The result is a split system: payments are forbidden, but trading is booming — roughly $50B in volume by October, more than ten times last year — driven by working-class investors like indie rocker Ananda Badudu, who has already lost $1,000. That puts Indonesia alongside Afghanistan's surge to 20th in Chainalysis adoption rankings as evidence that adoption outruns official sanction.
First-order effects
- Retail traders bear the downside directly: Badudu's $1,000 loss shows working-class investors absorbing market risk without any change in their legal ability to pay with crypto.
- Exchanges and intermediaries capture the volume growth while operating inside a narrow lane — trading allowed, payments banned — leaving them dependent on speculative activity alone.
Second-order effects
- The Ulema Council faces a widening gap between doctrine and behavior: if trading keeps multiplying despite the payment ban, pressure builds for either a sharia-compliant crypto product or a harder line, echoing the compliance hurdles that slowed sharia-fintech adoption.
- Regulators watching payment bans fail to curb volume must decide whether to tax and license trading activity or tighten restrictions — a choice other emerging-market governments, from Afghanistan to Argentina, are confronting in parallel.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, emerging markets will formalize crypto as a traded asset class while keeping it out of payments — regulation following usage rather than preceding it, with religious authorities shaping the compliant-product layer on top.
- A generation of first-time investors entering through speculation, with losses like Badudu's already banked, sets up the political conditions for consumer-protection rules once the 2021 peak unwinds.
The trend: In emerging markets, crypto adoption is compounding faster than governments and religious authorities can restrict it, pushing regulators toward legitimizing trading while banning its use as money.