of Turkish
own cryptocurrency
It is estimated that over 4.6 million people, 5.5% of Turkey’s total population, currently own cryptocurrency.
At times the Turkish lira has, in fact, proved to be more volatile than bitcoin. Turkey’s inflation rate recently surpassed 83%(3), a 24-year high. Moreover, salaries often do not keep up with inflation, meaning earners have decreasing purchasing power.
As such, many see crypto as a refuge from Turkey’s sky-high inflation and the steep devaluation of the lira. For a culture used to investment alternatives like U.S. dollars or gold, it is not hard for the Turkish population to trust another alternative, which is crypto.
The daily trading volume of Turkey’s first cryptocurrency platform BtcTurk reached around $424.3 million in May 2022, according to CoinGecko data, while another local Turkish platform, Paribu, had a trading volume of $203.5 million. Global exchanges like Binance and Coinbase also operate in Turkey.
Turkey is crafting legislation that would establish greater control over the cryptocurrency market and possibly impose a tax on some transactions involving digital assets, according to two officials.
