Turkish cryptocurrency market has experienced significant growth in recent years. According to surveys and research, more than half of our country’s population currently invests in crypto assets. This is evidenced by the fact that the Turkish Lira is the fourth most used fiat currency in crypto. Several macroeconomic factors are fueling this crypto adoption in our country, and as a result, stablecoins and memecoins have emerged as favorites among Turkish investors, even surpassing Bitcoin.
Intense Interest from Turkish Investors in These Projects
According to Kaiko’s latest report, our country’s inflationary conditions have significantly increased stablecoin usage in recent years. The research company found that in 2024, the USDT-TRY pair dominated as the largest trading pair on Binance in terms of volume, exceeding $22 billion, which is five times more than the next largest pair, PEPE-USDT, which has $4 billion.
Especially memecoin projects surpassed Bitcoin in trading volume this year, indicating that Turkish investors are turning to more speculative crypto assets to hedge against currency volatility and earn profits. The increase in stablecoin usage is better understood in the top Bitcoin trading pairs on BTCTurk, such as BTC-USDT and BTC-TRY.
One of the main reasons driving cryptocurrency adoption is our country’s struggle with double-digit inflation and currency devaluation for years, with the average inflation rate exceeding 40% over the past five years. In response, the central bank adopted an unconventional monetary policy by lowering interest rates until June 2023, but this worsened the devaluation of the Turkish Lira, which lost more than 300% of its value from the end of 2020 to the end of 2023.
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Amid economic challenges, Binance strengthened its position as one of the two largest trading platforms preferred by Turkish investors due to deep liquidity and low fees. As part of a large-scale zero-fee campaign, the team offered free trading for BTC-TRY transactions between July 2022 and March 2023.
Offering a wide variety of TRY-denominated trading pairs and aggressively adding new pairs in recent years helped Binance maintain its leadership in the country despite the 2022 crypto bear market. Binance introduced 61 new TRY trading pairs in 2024 alone, bringing the total number to over 200. Other exchanges like Gate.io, KuCoin, and OKX also entered the Turkish crypto ecosystem, but their combined market share remains below 1%.
