May 12, 2020

Coin Shares Founder Meltem Demirors and Simplex CEO Nimrod Lehavi join CoinDesk’s Leigh Cuen and Zack Seward to talk about BTC in the Middle East.

Video transcript

Coin Shares Founder Meltem Demirors and Simplex CEO Nimrod Lehavi join CoinDesk’s Leigh Cuen and Zack Seward to talk about BTC in the Middle East.“Turkey has been making headlines in the crypto space recently,” Meltem Demirors said. “In terms of penetrate, or the percentage of people using cryptocurrency, Turkey has the highest rate per capita.” Yet compared to the market as a whole, the nation is still rather small, she said, citing an ING Bank retail banking report.In many emerging markets, Demirors argues, people may be preconditioned to experiment with novel financial tools because they are already accustomed to dealing with currency fluctuations and trading foreign currencies. “In the Middle East, people are trading ForEx in their bank accounts and actively thinking about holding their money” in various currencies.

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