IOST across Asia: six markets, six different rulebooks

The short answer

IOST is an Asian coin in the most practical sense: most of its trading, most of its regulated listings and most of its long-time holders sit in a handful of Asian markets. But "Asia" is not one market. A buyer in Osaka, one in Busan and one in Ho Chi Minh City face three completely different sets of rules, exchanges and tax bills, even though they end up holding the same token.

The quickest way to think about it is in two groups. In Japan, South Korea, Thailand and Indonesia you can buy IOST directly with your own currency on an exchange your local regulator supervises. In Taiwan and Vietnam no local platform offers IOST, so people buy crypto first and then trade it for IOST on a global exchange, with all the legal grey areas that implies. Everything else on this page, from fees to tax to which network to use, follows from which group your country falls into.

If you only need the generic steps, our how-to-buy guide walks through them. If you want to know which exchange in your country actually lists IOST and how deep its market is, keep reading or jump straight to your country guide below.

Six markets compared

The table puts the essentials side by side: who regulates crypto, where IOST trades locally, the tax headline and whether CEX.IO, the long-running exchange we mention for card purchases of crypto, accepts residents. Use the chips to filter by route type. Country names link to the full guides.

Two things in that table surprise most readers. First, the market with the most regulated IOST listings, Japan, is not the market with the most IOST trading; that title belongs to Korea. Second, CEX.IO does not list IOST anywhere, so whatever role it plays is limited to the first leg of a crypto route, and in Japan it plays no role at all.

Local fiat pairs vs crypto routes

A local fiat pair means an order book where IOST trades directly against yen, won, baht or rupiah. You send money from your bank to the exchange, buy IOST and you are done. The exchange checks your identity, holds your funds under local rules and reports to a regulator you can complain to. In Thailand, buying on an SEC-licensed venue also keeps you inside the 2025–2029 capital-gains exemption, and in Indonesia a domestic platform means a 0.21% final tax instead of 1% on a foreign one. Those are real, money-in-your-pocket reasons to stay local when you can.

The catch is liquidity. A local pair is only as good as the people trading on it. Japan’s yen books are a clear example: four FSA-registered exchanges list IOST, but the order books are thin, so a large market order can move the price and the gap between buy and sell orders is wider than on the big venues. On a beginner app, the default "buy" button often routes to a dealer-style sales desk with a built-in spread rather than the order book, which our Japan guide explains in detail.

A crypto route means you first acquire a dollar stablecoin and then swap it for IOST on a global exchange such as Binance or OKX. The IOST books there are deep and spreads are tight. The costs are elsewhere: an extra step, a transfer fee, a second exchange account, and, depending on where you live, a regulatory problem. Taiwan’s regulator has registered 11 platforms for AML purposes and none lists IOST, while the big global exchanges are not on that list. Vietnam goes further: since 1 September 2026, Decree 284/2026 sets fines of VND 30–50 million for residents who trade on platforms the Ministry of Finance has not licensed, and no licence had been issued when we last checked.

In practice, plenty of people in local-fiat markets use crypto routes too, and plenty of people in crypto-route markets wish they had a local pair. The point is not that one model is good and the other bad. It is that the local pair trades liquidity for legal comfort, and the crypto route trades legal comfort for liquidity.

Where the liquidity really sits

If you look at IOST’s market data on any given day, two venues stand out: Binance’s IOST/USDT book and Upbit’s KRW-IOST market in South Korea. Each regularly carries a large slice of global IOST volume, and in the market snapshot we pulled for this guide Upbit traded dozens of times more IOST than all Japanese yen books combined. Bithumb, Korea’s second KRW venue, and Bitkub in Thailand sit in a second tier. Bittime has the deepest rupiah book. The yen markets at Coincheck and OKJ are small, and BitTrade’s yen book barely trades. For live figures, the IOST price page shows the current market and the converter gives you local-currency rates.

Korea’s weight also shows up on-chain. The largest account on the IOST mainnet, dunamuiost, belongs to Dunamu, the company behind Upbit, and holds roughly 30% of the L1 supply. The top ten accounts together hold about 72%. Most of those big balances are exchange custody wallets, so this is not one whale controlling the coin; it is a sign that a very large share of IOST is held by Korean retail customers through a single exchange. Our tokenomics guide breaks the rich list down further.

Why does that matter for you? Because liquidity decides your real cost. A 0.1% trading fee on a thin book can cost you more than a 0.25% fee on a deep one once the spread and slippage are added. It also explains why exchange notices from Korea move the whole market: when DAXA, the Korean exchanges’ joint body, issued a caution on IOST on 13 January 2025, the reaction was global, even though IOST was never designated a warning asset and never delisted.

Country guides

Each guide covers the regulator, every local exchange that lists IOST, how people there actually buy, tax, the local IOST story and the scams that circulate in that market. They are written separately because the markets really are that different: Japan is about registered exchanges and the 販売所 spread, Korea about Upbit and DAXA notices, Thailand about Bitkub and the tax holiday, Indonesia about the official tradable-asset list, Vietnam about a pilot regime that has not opened yet, and Taiwan about the absence of any local listing.

SRNo.019

AsiaJapanCoincheck, OKJ, BitTrade, Binance JapanOpen guide

SRNo.023

AsiaSouth KoreaUpbit, Bithumb, DAXA noticesOpen guide

SRNo.024

AsiaTaiwanTWD to crypto to IOST routesOpen guide

SRNo.020

AsiaThailandBitkub IOST/THB and SEC rulesOpen guide

SRNo.022

AsiaVietnamNew law, pilot exchanges, crypto routesOpen guide

SRNo.021

AsiaIndonesiaBittime, Indodax, Tokocrypto, OJKOpen guide

A few highlights to orient you. Japan had the first regulated IOST listing in the region when Coincheck added it on 8 September 2020, and IOST sits on the JVCEA Green List, though BITPOINT and CoinTrade dropped it in summer 2026. South Korea has listed KRW-IOST on Upbit since 25 July 2018. Thailand’s Bitkub has offered IOST/THB since 27 November 2018, and Thai investors still call IOST "เหรียญยาย", the grandma coin, though nobody quite agrees why. Indonesia lists IOST on the CFX tradable-asset list. Vietnam and Taiwan are the crypto-route markets.

Same coin, different apps

A Korean buyer opens Upbit, a Thai buyer opens Bitkub and a Japanese buyer opens Coincheck or OKJ. The token is the same, but the deposit network, the memo field and the airdrop rules can differ from app to app.

Networks, memos and maintenance pauses

Wherever you buy, IOST now exists in two main forms. The original L1 coin runs on the IOST mainnet, where you send to an account name and exchanges need a memo to credit your deposit. The BEP-20 token on BNB Chain, introduced with IOST 3.0, uses a 0x address and no memo. The regulated Asian exchanges we checked, including Coincheck and Upbit, support the L1 network for deposits and withdrawals; we found no evidence that Japanese or Korean exchanges accept BEP-20 IOST. Send the wrong version, or forget the memo, and your coins can be lost. Our guide to sending IOST covers both cases step by step.

Airdrops are the other place where local practice matters. The IOST 3.0 airdrop for exchange holders was based on a snapshot taken on 15 March 2025 at 09:00 JST and is paid out over 48 months, but each exchange sets its own schedule: Upbit pays monthly, Coincheck and BitTrade every six months, Bitkub monthly. If you hold IOST on an exchange that took part, you do nothing; the exchange credits you. Our airdrop guide has the full schedule and the fake-claim scams to avoid.

The card-to-crypto route, honestly explained

We mention CEX.IO on this site for one narrow job, and it is worth being clear about it. CEX.IO has been running since 2013 and lets you buy crypto or BNB with a card, Apple Pay or Google Pay, priced in USD, EUR or GBP. It does not list IOST. Asian users outside Japan contract with its Nevis entity, CEX OVRS LLC, which holds no Asian licence, and it does not accept Japanese residents at all. Korean users may find some coins restricted.

So the route is: buy crypto with a card, withdraw it to an exchange that lists IOST and is open to residents of your country, buy IOST there, then move it to your own wallet if you want self-custody. That can make sense in Taiwan or Vietnam, or for someone whose local bank rails do not reach an exchange. It makes much less sense in Korea or Thailand, where you can buy IOST directly with local currency on a supervised exchange, and none at all in Japan.

Outside Japan? Start with a stablecoin

Buy crypto with a card, send it to an exchange that lists IOST and is available where you live, then swap. Check local rules first, especially in Vietnam and Thailand.

Start with crypto

Check that the service is available in your country before signing up.

Exchange reviews for IOST buyers

We have reviewed the five exchanges that matter most for IOST in Asia, each from the angle of an IOST buyer rather than a general crypto trader: how deep the IOST market is, which network the exchange uses, what the memo rules are and how the exchange handled IOST 3.0. Upbit is the deepest KRW market and pays the airdrop monthly, though it has had two hot-wallet hacks. Coincheck is Japan’s original IOST listing with low order-book fees and a thin book. Bitkub runs the only baht market, with a governance record you should read about first. Indodax offers IOST/IDR but very little volume. Binance has the deepest IOST/USDT book but is not licensed in Vietnam or Taiwan.

For a single list of every venue by country, including the smaller ones such as OKJ, BitTrade, Bithumb, Coinone, Bittime and Tokocrypto, see our IOST exchanges overview.

Find your country first!

How to pick your route

Start with where you live, not with which exchange has the best marketing. If your country has a supervised exchange with an IOST pair in local currency, that is your default. Compare the order-book fee, check how much IOST actually trades there, and use limit orders if the book is thin. Make sure the exchange supports the network you plan to use, and note whether it took part in the IOST 3.0 airdrop if that matters to you.

If your country has no local listing, decide how you will get crypto, which global exchange you will trade on and whether that exchange is permitted where you live. Keep records of every leg for tax. And whichever route you choose, keep the amount in proportion to the risk: IOST is more than 99% below its January 2018 high, its markets can swing hard in both directions and the network is still changing. Our risk guide is a sensible next read before you put money in.