Meme Tokens Surge Past Bitcoin in Turkish Trading Activity This Year
The Turkish crypto market has experienced significant growth in recent years. Currently, more than half of the population is invested in crypto, according to polls and surveys.
The is evident by the fact that the Turkish Lira (TRY) is the fourth most used fiat currency in crypto. Fueling this crypto adoption in the country are several macroeconomic factors. As such, stablecoins and meme coins have emerged as Turkish investors’ favorites, even surpassing Bitcoin.
Stablecoins and Meme Coins Dominate Turkish Trades
According to the latest report by Kaiko, Turkey’s inflationary conditions have greatly increased the use of stablecoins in recent years. In 2024, the research firm found that USDT-TRY dominates as the largest trading pair by volume on Binance, reaching over $22 billion, more than five times greater than the next largest pair, PEPE-USDT, which has $4 billion.
Notably, meme tokens have outpaced Bitcoin in trading volume this year, indicating that Turkish traders are also turning to more speculative crypto assets to hedge against currency fluctuations and rake in gains.
The rise in stablecoin usage is further reflected in the top Bitcoin trading pairs on BTCTurk, which are BTC-USDT and BTC-TRY.
One of the main reasons driving crypto adoption is Turkey’s struggle with double-digit inflation and currency devaluation for years, with an average inflation rate exceeding 40% over the past five years. In response, the central bank adopted an unorthodox monetary policy, cutting rates until June 2023. However, this worsened the devaluation of the Turkish Lira which lost over 300% of its value from the end of 2020 to the end of 2023.
Turkey’s move to normalize its monetary policy after the 2023 elections didn’t succeed in restoring confidence in the TRY, which kept decreasing in value in 2024, though less rapidly.
Binance Booming in Turkey
Amidst economic challenges, Binance has strengthened its hold as one of the two biggest trading platforms for Turkish traders, owing to deep liquidity and low fees. As part of a large-scale zero-fee campaign, it offered zero fees for BTC-TRY trading between July 2022 and March 2023.
Offering a large diversity of TRY-denominated trading pairs and aggressively adding new pairs over the past few years has helped Binance retain its lead in the country despite the 2022 crypto bear market. Binance introduced 61 new TRY trading pairs in 2024 alone, increasing the total number to over 200.
Other exchanges, such as Gate.io, KuCoin, and OKX, have forayed into the Turkey crypto ecosystem, but their combined market share remains below 1%.
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