Bitcoin and Tether Bought Massively in Turkey as Safe Haven from Falling Lira

The Wall Street Journal reported that the embrace of crypto is currently proceeding at a fast pace in Turkey due to local fiat currency Lira becoming highly volatile and plunging against the USD.

Still, in the traditional world of finance, crypto is believed to be very volatile as well.

WSJ：The Turkish lira has become so volatile that Turks have ditched the local currency for assets with an even riskier reputation: cryptocurrencies. Turks are particularly enamored of the stablecoin tether. https://t.co/MgAYX3WOOg

— Wu Blockchain (@WuBlockchain) January 13, 2022

Turks grabbing BTC and USDT, despite crypto ban

In late 2021, Lira (TRY) began to plunge against the USD with trading volumes involving Lira soaring to $1.8 billion per day on average on three crypto exchanges, as per data by Chainalysis. Back in 2019, this volume was a lot higher—approximately $71 billion worth of Lira spent on crypto per day.

Turkish people are after USD-pegged stablecoin Tether in particular. In the fall, 2,020 investors traded Lira against USDT more than the TRY/USD and TRY/EUR pairs, according to CryptoCompare.

Since September 2021, Lira has dropped by a whopping 40% against USD, while Bitcoin rose by the same percentage against the dollar by the start of November. At the moment, BTC is below that level by over 10%.

While Turks used to keep their savings in USD and gold, now they are choosing crypto: BTC and Tether.

Turkish investors have been feeling their way into crypto, despite the law that banned the use of digital currencies as a means of payment back in April 2021.