Tether and Shiba Inu Trading Activity in Turkey is Higher Than BTC’s Amid Lira Collapse

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Trading activity in Turkish Lira pairs with Shiba Inu and Tether has recently been more than five times higher than Bitcoin coinciding with the drastic devaluation of the lira, CoinDesk has reported.

At the end of November, the trading volume of the lira with BTC on Binance amounted to $918 million, while in the case of SHIB and USDT it amounted to $5.26 billion and $5.58 billion, respectively.

Strahinja Savic, head of data and analytics for crypto platform FRNT Financial, said:

“Local traders continue to be attracted by the exceptional returns associated with coins such as SHIB.”

The lira, Turkey’s official currency, has weakened against the dollar for the ninth year in a row. The pace reached 39.7% in November. Since the beginning of 2021, the currency has experienced a 46.5% decline, with only the Cuban peso (-95.8%) and the Libyan dinar (-70.9%) in a worse situation.

According to TradingEconomics, inflation in Turkey has soared to a three-year high of 21.31%.

Sabri Aygun, a crypto investor based in Istanbul, said:

“The priority of Turkish citizens is gold and the dollar. They also buy cheap cryptocurrencies like SHIB, VET, XRP because BTC is expensive.”