A new report released by the company decomposition According to Blockchain and Crypto Analytics, Turkey is the undisputed king of digital currencies in the Middle East, as the country is adopting digital currencies at much higher rates than neighboring countries.

Turkey ranks 29th out of 154 countries in Chainalysis’ global cryptocurrency adoption index, and first in the Middle East according to the same index.

The Chainalysis report states that Turkey has long been a haven for cryptocurrency adoption, one of the main reasons being Turkey’s economic uncertainty.

The same report indicated the following:

The Turkish lira has been very volatile in recent years, leading some to convert part of their savings into cryptocurrencies.

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There are currently no legal regulations for cryptocurrency in Turkey, but the country’s Capital Markets Board (CMB) is in the process of developing an appropriate framework for it.

The Chainalysis report showed that most of the cryptocurrency exchanges in the Middle East such as Binance, Huobi and Bitfinex come from Turkish users.

On the Turkey-based trading platform BTCTurk, the most common trades are the lira trading pair – Bitcoin.

At this point, the report indicated the following:

Most users will likely use BTCTurk to buy cryptocurrencies before sending them to other larger platforms such as Binance that offer more liquidity and trading.

The report also showed that pre-existing adoption of fintech and mobile payment platforms was higher in Turkey than elsewhere in the region and that the upcoming regulatory framework is likely to lead to more adoption of cryptocurrencies.

Even before the coronavirus hit the Turkish economy hard, the country was struggling to maintain stability and growth but the economy slipped into recession at the end of 2018, with external debt and unemployment long high.

The Turkish lira is also very weak, as this year it recorded a record low of 20%, making it the third weakest currency in the world in 2020, according to a report issued by Reuters.

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Elsewhere in the Middle East, Chainalysis noted that other countries are ahead in the crypto adoption race in terms of regulation, government acceptance, and promotion, although adoption levels are currently low.

However, the Middle East remains the second smallest cryptocurrency market in the world after Africa, according to the Chainalysis report.

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