It has been a rough year for crypto. Prices have plunged, projects have collapsed and companies are laying off employees. In the U.S., bitcoin does not appear to be acting as the inflation hedge it was supposed to be. Nor has it been a safe haven from the turmoil of the stock market. One might ask: What is the point of crypto, anyway?
A country like Turkey provides some answers. After conversations with nearly two dozen people in the Turkish crypto community, I caught a glimpse of a world in which crypto is not a game, but a necessity.
Crypto fever is palpable in Istanbul. The area around the Grand Bazaar hosts several small businesses where you can just walk in and exchange cash for bitcoin (BTC) or tether (USDT). My colleague said the first thing she saw at Istanbul airport was a huge crypto ad. There are at least 8 million people in Turkey engaged in crypto, according to an estimate in a 2022 research report by the Turkish crypto exchange Paribu, one of the largest crypto exchanges in Turkey. Just last week, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan highlighted the benefits of blockchain technology, while advising young people to stay away from gambling with cryptocurrency. He also said that Turkey wanted to be a producer, not a consumer, in the digital assets world.
Read more: Build on Blockchain, Stay Away From Gambling With Crypto, Turkey’s Erdoğan Says
Of course, Turkey is not immune to the global crypto downturn. Paribu’s 2022 research reports the exchange’s daily trade volume at $145 million, down from $850 million in 2021. But still, local enthusiasm remains strong. Turkey’s crypto community is advocating for Devcon, Ethereum’s biggest developer event, to be held in Istanbul.
There have been various mainstream media articles that describe crypto as a refuge from Turkey’s sky-high inflation and the steep devaluation of the lira. The falling lira is a big part of this story, but it doesn’t fully explain crypto’s local appeal. In Turkey, crypto…
