Turkey’s Crypto Interest Is Growing Each Year

The world’s 20th biggest economy, the country of Turkey, may not be the most well known internationally for its authoritarian President, Recep Tayyip Ergodan, but the country is definitely modern in many other aspects. Turkey’s crypto interest is a proof for that – and the country is on a good path to become a global industry in that manner.

At the moment, the trading volumes in BTC/TRY (Turkish Lira) are small compared to other major fiat currencies, the cryptonews show. However, Turkey’s crypto interest is big and recent news confirmed that the crypto-related companies are setting their sights on the Euro-Asian country.

In October, Huobi said that it will launch an option to trade TRY for Tether and its USDT stablecoin by the end of the year. The mobile-based cryptocurrency Electroneum (ETN) signed a deal with three Turkish telecom operators to enable people to pay for airtime using ETN.

With the Turkish government’s plans to introduce its own central bank currency (CBDC), the interest is growing. There is a set date by 2023 and it is likely that cryptocurrency and blockchain will increase their prominence in the country in the years to come.

Turkey’s crypto interest is growing – and the country is one of the friendliest populations to crypto in the world. Last year, there was a survey published by ING indicating that 18% of the surveyed Turkish citizens own cryptocurrency in one kind of another. This comes in contrast to the 9% of Europeans and 8% of Americans with the same activity.

Other surveys also show that crypto ownership in Turkey is fairly common, even if the trading volumes for TRY are relatively low. When the Turkish Lira plummeted in value last August, Turkey’s crypto interest surged even more and Bitcoin.org reported that it saw a 42% increase in its visits coming from Istanbul, Turkey. The trading volumes on Turkish exchanges also increased.

There’s been a MASSIVE 42% increase in visitors to https://t.co/OsFgRFRRZb from Istanbul as the Turkish Lira plummets. This is how Bitcoin takes over the world, not through ETF’s and “HODL”, but through replacing fiat currencies as they fall apart!

— Cøbra (@CobraBitcoin) August 13, 2018

Other surveys including the 2019 Statista Global Consumer Survey shows that 20% of the surveyed Turks do own cryptocurrency – something that replicates the findings of the ING survey.

“Yes, the cryptocurrency industry is very popular in Turkey nowadays and more and more investors are showing interest in crypto sector each year in Turkey,” confirmed the team at Sistekmkoin, which is one of the largest crypto exchanges in the country.