As the Turkish Lira continues to fall against the Dollar, people in Turkey have been turning to stablecoins such as Tether.

The Lira registered a record decline in its exchange rate with the greenback when the Turkish central bank stopped intervention following the recent presidential election.

Demand for Tether (USDT) in Turkey has been on the rise since the beginning of last month, despite the ongoing crypto crackdown across the globe, Bloomberg reports.

Although cryptocurrency prices have fallen, Turkey’s Lira has been worse off, the report added.

Over the last week, the Lira has plummeted 11% against the Dollar following the re-election of Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. State banks returned to support on Wednesday as the currency registered its largest drop in more than a year.

With the Lira losing 80% of its value since the 2018 election and down 20% against the Dollar so far this year, people have been turning to stablecoins such as Tether. Lira transactions reached a peak in May at 18%, making up 10% of total crypto trading volumes at the beginning of this month.

“Investing in stablecoins allows people to keep the value of their wealth; it’s one of the ways to hold on to some value when inflation is this high,” according to the former banker and university lecturer Ebru Güven, adding that regulations have made it trickier to purchase Dollars or gold.

Furthermore, the report shows Tether’s trading volume on the domestic crypto exchange, Btcturk has reached 20%, Bitcoin.com reports, compared to 1% on Binance, the world’s largest crypto exchange by trading volume, as per Coinmarketcap data. 

“It’s noticeable that despite historically low volumes, demand for stablecoins on Turkish markets has remained robust,” said Kaiko Analyst Dessislava Aubert. In May, Tether’s trading volume share on local markets hit its highest since 2020; she went on to say.