Cryptoverse: Digital coins lure inflation-weary Argentines and Turks

economictimes.indiatimes.com:

Ownership of digital currencies in Turkey was the highest in the world at 27.1% followed by Argentina at 23.5% — well above global crypto ownership rate estimated at 11.9% — according to data from research firm GWI. What's common to Turkey and Argentina besides their pole positions in crypto adoption is high inflation, which has led to crumbling currencies and capital controls to deter local residents from taking money out. Turkey's annual inflation was 50.51% in March, Argentina's was even higher at 104%. The lira and peso have been plunging and are at record lows. Argentina's peso trades around 464 per dollar in the black market, more than double the official exchange rate of 222.

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Much of the safe-haven buying has been of stablecoins such as USD Coin (USDC) and Tether (USDT), which are crypto tokens pegged one-to-one to a traditional asset such as the U.S. dollar or gold, giving investors an alternative to scarce dollars. «Folks, whether they're on the retail side or institutional side, are thinking about how can we hedge against currency devaluation,» said Ehab Zaghloul, chief research scientist at Tribal Credit, a digital payments platform for startups in emerging markets. «They want to potentially hold additional assets pegged to a stronger currency, so, things like USDC or USDT or anything pegged to a stronger currency like the U.S. dollar.» Trading volume for the USDT-Turkish lira pair reached