IOST crypto, explained for Asian investors

What IOST is, in one minute

IOST is a public blockchain and the token that powers it. The name stands for Internet of Services Token, and the network has run its own mainnet, called Olympus, since 25 February 2019. Blocks arrive every half second, smart contracts are written in JavaScript, and instead of paying a fee for every transfer you lock a little IOST to receive gas. The project is run by the IOS Foundation, a Singapore-based foundation, and its code is public on GitHub. If you want the long version with founders and history, start with our guide to what IOST is.

Since March 2025 the story has a second chapter. Under the plan called IOST 3.0, the foundation issued 21.32 billion new tokens as a BEP-20 token on BNB Chain and launched a Layer 2 network built on the OP Stack. So when someone says “IOST”, they may mean the native coin on the original chain, the BEP-20 token on BNB Chain, or the new Layer 2 network. Most of the costly mistakes we see begin with mixing these up, so here is the short version.

A few things IOST is not. It is not mineable: there is no proof-of-work, and new tokens go to block producers and voters. It has nothing to do with the Internet of Things, even though the names sound alike. And it is not a stablecoin or a payment app, although the foundation has pitched payments and real-world assets in recent years. The engine underneath is a voting system the team calls Proof of Believability, which we unpack, together with the speed figures, on our IOST technology page.

Why Japan and Korea care about IOST

IOST’s story in Japan begins on 8 September 2020, when Coincheck listed it as the first Japanese exchange to do so. At the time, very few altcoins had made it through Japan’s strict review, so a listing on a domestic, FSA-registered exchange put IOST in front of a large retail audience. OKCoin Japan, now OKJ, followed on 15 September 2021. The FSA’s own register shows four registered exchanges that handle IOST: Coincheck, OKJ, BitTrade and Binance Japan. IOST also sits on the JVCEA green list, the industry association’s list of widely handled assets. Not everyone stayed, though: BITPOINT and CoinTrade dropped IOST in 2026. The full picture, with tax rules, is on our IOST in Japan page.

The project worked hard for that audience. It joined the Japan Blockchain Association in 2021, ran free blockchain classes at Japanese universities, and hosted the RIZIN FIGHTING COLLECTION NFT marketplace built by NFT-Japan under a RIZIN licence. More recently it has co-hosted meetups in Tokyo with local exchanges. In a 2025 interview with Korean outlet Block Media, IOST’s CEO said Japan is the project’s largest community and Korea its second-largest market. That is a company statement, not an audited figure, but trading data points the same way. Our NFT, games and Japan tie-ups page separates the real Japanese projects from the rumors.

Japan: the community anchor

Four FSA-registered exchanges list IOST, and Coincheck was the first in 2020.

Korea is where much of the actual trading happens. Upbit opened its KRW-IOST market on 25 July 2018, and Bithumb and Coinone also trade IOST against the won. In the aggregated exchange data our researchers checked, Upbit’s KRW book ranked as the second-largest IOST market in the world, behind only Binance’s IOST market. One on-chain detail says a lot: the custody account labelled for Dunamu, Upbit’s operator, holds roughly 30% of all native IOST. When Korea’s exchange alliance DAXA issued a caution about IOST in January 2025, the price felt it. Read our South Korea page and the Upbit review for the details.

Southeast Asia has its own pockets. Thailand’s Bitkub has run an IOST/THB market since November 2018, and some Thai investors jokingly call IOST “grandma coin”, though nobody has a confirmed origin for the nickname. Indonesia lists IOST on its official tradable-asset list, with IDR and crypto pairs on local exchanges. Taiwan has no local IOST listing at all, and Vietnam is moving through a new licensing regime. The Asia hub compares all six markets side by side.

How IOST 3.0 changed the picture

IOST 3.0 started as a governance proposal on 21 October 2024, framed around payments (PayFi) and DePIN. The main announcement on 12 December 2024 described IOST becoming a specialized Layer 2 on BNB Chain. A second community vote passed on 12 January 2025, and one day later DAXA and Upbit issued a caution notice because of the planned supply change. It was a caution, not a warning designation, and IOST was never delisted in Korea. The official launch followed on 8 March 2025, together with the BEP-20 token contract and the airdrop rules.

The new issuance is large. The 21.32 billion new IOST are split 60% for validator or node rewards, 20% for airdrops and StakeDrops, 8% for community incentives, 5% for developer grants, 4% for the Nexus DAO and 3% for the team, all released over several years. Holders with at least 1,000 IOST at the snapshot on 15 March 2025, 09:00 JST, receive an airdrop paid out over 48 months, either through their exchange or by claiming on iost.io. Our airdrop guide lists the payout schedules at Coincheck, BitTrade, Upbit and Bitkub, and the tokenomics page explains what that does to supply.

What about the Layer 2 itself? It is real and it runs: an OP Stack rollup on BNB Chain with chain ID 182, where gas is paid in BNB. But when our researchers sampled thousands of its blocks, they found essentially no user transactions, and the official bridge moves only BNB so far. Meanwhile the original L1 keeps going. In October 2026 every block producer installed the mandatory go-iost v4.0.0 upgrade, and several exchanges paused IOST deposits and withdrawals for a few days around 21–26 October while they upgraded. The foundation also raised $21 million in a strategic round in June 2025 and burned 70 million legacy tokens on 8 September 2026.

The price reality

IOST’s all-time high was about $0.1298 on 23 January 2018, during the first altcoin mania and just after the token started trading. Its all-time low came much later, at about $0.000526 on 19 August 2026. That leaves the price more than 99% below its peak, even after short rallies. The big chapters in between were a strong 2021, when the Japanese listing and a broad bull market pushed IOST up roughly sixteenfold in four months, and a long slide after that. Brief spikes in September and October 2026 tripled or doubled the price within a day and then gave it all back within days.

Supply explains part of the picture. The hard cap is 90 billion IOST, the native chain carries about 32.6 billion, and CoinGecko counts roughly 36.7 billion as circulating once the BEP-20 supply is included. When people ask whether IOST can reach 1 yen or 1 dollar, the answer comes down to that number multiplied by the price, which we work through on the price prediction page. For live numbers use the chart below the article, the IOST price page or the IOST converter for yen, won, baht and other local currencies. We never print a static price in our articles, because it would be wrong by the time you read it.

How to buy IOST where you live

The simplest rule works almost everywhere in Asia: if a regulated exchange in your country lists IOST against your local currency, start there. In Japan that means one of the four FSA-registered exchanges, and Coincheck and OKJ both run IOST/JPY order books. Korean users have Upbit, Bithumb and Coinone. Thai users have Bitkub, one of the exchanges licensed by Thailand’s SEC. In Indonesia, OJK-supervised platforms such as Indodax, Tokocrypto and Bittime offer IOST. Our step-by-step guide to buying IOST covers payment methods, order types and how to sell later, and the exchange comparison shows which venue serves which country.

Where no local exchange lists IOST, people take a two-step route. Taiwanese users, for example, buy crypto with TWD on an FSC-registered platform such as MAX or BitoPro, move it to a global exchange that lists IOST, and buy there. Vietnam is a special case: Decree 284 has fined trading on unlicensed platforms since 1 September 2026, so read our Vietnam page before you pick a route. In every case, check two details before you withdraw: whether the exchange wants native IOST or BEP-20 IOST, and whether it needs a memo.

A note for readers in Japan

Use an FSA-registered exchange: Coincheck, OKJ, BitTrade or Binance Japan. The FSA has warned several overseas exchanges that offer services to Japanese residents without registration.

No local IOST market? Start with crypto

Many readers outside Japan first buy crypto or BNB with a card, then move it to an exchange that lists IOST. CEX.IO, an exchange running since 2013, is one option for that first step. It does not list IOST itself and does not serve Japan.

Grab crypto, then IOST

Wallets and staking basics

Native IOST uses human-readable account names of 5 to 11 characters instead of long hex addresses. A new account has to be created by an existing one, and the setup locks about 10 IOST for gas plus a small RAM purchase, roughly 11.6 IOST in total. The official wallet is iWallet Pro, a Chrome extension. TokenPocket supports native IOST on Android. For BEP-20 IOST, any BNB Chain wallet such as MetaMask or Trust Wallet works. There is no native Ledger app for the IOST mainnet, so treat any “Ledger Live IOST” download page as phishing. Our IOST wallets guide compares the options.

Sending is where small details matter. Exchanges usually give every customer the same deposit account and tell them apart by memo, so a transfer without the right memo can get stuck. As a worked example, if you send 1,000 IOST from a wallet to Coincheck, you enter Coincheck’s account name and your personal memo; Coincheck says it cannot cancel a completed transfer. The guide to sending IOST explains memos, gas and what to do when something goes wrong, and our IOST explorer lets you check any transaction hash or account.

“Staking” on IOST means voting. One IOST equals one vote, a node needs more than 2.1 million votes to qualify, and when you remove your votes the tokens stay locked for 72 hours. On BNB Chain, the StakeDrop program offered longer lockups with reward multipliers for BEP-20 holders. Several Japanese exchanges have also offered IOST staking or lending products, with rates that change and campaigns that end. The IOST staking guide walks through all three routes and the trade-offs of each.

The risks we would flag first

The first risk is supply. The IOST 3.0 issuance more than doubled the token count relative to the 21 billion at genesis, and much of it vests over the coming years, which creates steady selling pressure. The second is concentration: the ten largest native accounts hold about 72% of the L1 supply. Most of those are exchange custody accounts rather than single whales, but it still means a handful of platforms matter a lot. The third is activity. On a normal day the explorer shows only a couple of transactions per second, most of them automatic block rewards, which is a long way from the original vision.

Then there are the practical risks. Exchanges can pause deposits for upgrades, as several did for v4.0.0 in October 2026. Japanese order books are thin, so large orders can move the price. Scammers love IOST: the explorer’s token list contains many fake “IOST” tokens, fake airdrop sites ask for seed phrases, and copycat BEP-20 contracts circulate. The only official BEP-20 contract is the one published in the IOST docs. Our page on whether IOST is safe covers each of these in depth, and the DApps and DeFi page shows which ecosystem projects are still alive.

How to use this site

iost.asia is an independent research hub. We are not the official IOST website and we do not speak for the IOS Foundation. Our facts come from primary sources wherever possible: the IOST developer docs, the IOST 3.0 documentation, the official IOSTSCAN explorer, exchange notices and regulator registers in each country. Where a claim could not be confirmed, we say so instead of repeating it. Live prices on this site come straight from public market data in your browser, so they are as fresh as the source.

If you are new, read this page, then what IOST is and the IOST 3.0 explainer. If you already hold IOST, the airdrop, staking and sending guides will save you the most trouble. If you are choosing an exchange, start with your country page and then the reviews of Coincheck, Bitkub, Indodax and Binance. Nothing here is financial advice; our disclaimer explains why, and the about page explains how we work. Spotted an error? Tell us through the contact page.