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Istanbul, Turkey – From Istiklal Street, the busiest pedestrian crossing in Istanbul, walkers occasionally stop at the NakitCoins window to look at the screen showing the prices of cryptocurrencies.
Few people enter the store, but the brick-and-mortar exchange, which allows them to buy or sell Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, is a physical example of the fact that the poor Turkish lira is boosting the popularity of virtual cryptocurrencies in Turkey. recent history of scandalized exchanges.
Interest in cryptocurrencies among Turks, as in the rest of the world, has increased over the years. But Turkey’s economic crisis has driven millions of observers to sink their savings into Bitcoin, Ethereum and other currencies. New converts are not only attracting investment promises in cryptocurrencies, which are prone to wild and volatile price changes. They see virtual currencies as a lira as a storehouse of protection for savings confused by the roads which meant that the Turkish currency alone lost more than 40 percent of its value last year.
The growing appetite for cryptography is the latest expression of the Turkish public’s search for reliable investments, said Cem Yilmaz, who founded NakitCoins in 2018 and has now opened three branches in the country.
“The Turks are very interested in investing, it could be forex [foreign exchange], or gold, or now cryptography, ”he said.
Yilmaz launched NakitCoins to help cryptocurrencies overcome their fears of sinking their money into a new virtual investment vehicle through exchanges that only exist on the ground.
The people of Turkey are very interested in investing.
“We already had a lot of online exchanges in Turkey, so we thought,‘ Why not have something physical where people can come and ask questions and face the crypto instead of going online? ’” He said.
Most of NakitCoins ’current customers are foreigners, Yilmaz said, because current Turkish regulations make it difficult to operate directly with Turkish lira cash. But he and other players in the crypto sector in the country are expected to be able to operate directly on the new legislation that works.
‘Encryption’
Turkey’s daily cryptocurrency transactions exceeded one million in March last year, according to Chainalysis and Kaiko data reported by Reuters news agency.
That month’s rise came after President Tayyip Erdogan’s ousted chief of the country’s central bank burned the lira. However, volumes began to decline in April after the central bank announced a ban on the use of cryptocurrencies for payment. Then, in late April, two Turkish currency exchanges – Thodex and Vebitcoin – collapsed, wiping out the holdings of hundreds of thousands of users.
But cryptocurrency has strengthened in recent months, with trade volumes hovering in excess of one million a day in the face of rising central bank interest rate hikes in the face of rising inflation. lira value crash.
Billboards and TV commercials are increasingly announcing ways for the public to enter the crypto market, and in most TV channels, the updated values of Bitcoin appear alongside the US dollar and the euro.
Turan Sert, an advisor to Paribu, Turkey’s largest online crypto exchange, said the growing awareness underscores how cryptocurrencies are increasingly being replaced by traditional foreign exchange stocks like gold or gold as a hedge against a local currency.
“In the past it was dollarization, which means that to avoid fluctuations in their currency, people kept their assets in dollars,” Al Jazeera said. “Now the latest trend is called cryptolysis.”
The latest trend is called ‘cryptolisation’.
Paribu allows Turks to use bank accounts to buy and sell Turkish cryptocurrencies, its user base has grown from about 1.5 million to 5 million by the end of 2021 by the end of the year, and its average daily trading volume has grown from $ 20 million. while it was. more than $ 500 million a day by 2020 by the end of 2021.
And local exchanges like Paribu and BTCTurk aren’t the only option for the country’s growing legions of crypto-investors. Global exchanges like Binance and Coinbase also operate in Turkey.
The exact number of investors with Turkish cryptocurrencies is difficult to estimate because not all exchanges have made their details public. But Sert says experts estimate that there are between 10 and 11 million people.
“If the Turkish people were to do their part in politics, it would be the third largest party in parliament,” said Sima Baktas, a cryptocurrency lawyer and co-founder of CryptoWomen Turkey, a non-profit organization that organizes cryptocurrencies. public education workshops.
Baktas, who estimates that at least 14 million people in Turkey’s 84 million people currently have cryptocurrencies, said the growing trend is driven by a young population that knows the online world and is eager to find a way to protect their savings. against the amortization of the lira.
“It was not difficult to adapt to the cryptography sector because we already had great potential,” he said. “After that, of course, came the Turkish lira, and the current economic situation is getting worse, and people are trying to find a reliable financial instrument for savings.”
Dealing with bad publicity
Crypto has grown in popularity despite the government’s warning over the years about the sector’s malicious volatility.
In 2017, officials warned the public that a speculative crypto sector would fall, and the Turkish Directorate of Religious Affairs said that Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies were not legal in Islam because they had no intrinsic value like gold and were too secretly surrounded. and a tendency to be abused by criminal networks.
If the people of Turkey were to make their own political party, it would be the third largest party in parliament.
The violent collapse of last year’s cryptocurrency exchange Thodex and Vebitcoin was greeted with criminal allegations and numerous reports that the Turks were cheating with cryptocurrency madness.
But Baktas said that negative publicity does not prevent the public from entering the crypto sector.
“Even the major TV channels are talking about cryptography now, and even when they show very bad news about crypto, Turks are getting more involved in cryptography because they don’t mind showing that bad news as a reliable sector.”
Meanwhile, with cryptocurrencies already banned for payments, Turkish authorities are working on new legislation that seeks to better regulate the sector.
This month, Baktas and other crypto experts met with Ankara lawmakers who are drafting new regulations that would make it easier to register for new cryptocurrencies, and potentially allow exchanges like NakitCoins to buy and sell cryptocurrencies directly.
“The goal is to regulate the system, prevent malicious intent, protect investors and prevent victimization,” said Mustafa Elitaş, deputy head of the parliamentary Justice and Development Party, on January 6.
He has met with experts such as Elitaş Baktas and exchange representatives to discuss a new regime regulation – a sign that the government is considering the issue, says Sert.
“He’s trying to understand the landscape, and it was helpful to talk to those members of the community to better understand what the issues are,” Sert said.
Rumors are circulating in Turkey about the introduction of new official cryptographic rules, such as the imposition of a 40 percent tax on cryptocurrencies, Elitaş has publicly denied.
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