Mustafa Elitas, Deputy Chairman of the AK Party Group and Turkey’s Minister of Economy, has reportedly met with members of the Turkish Shiba Inu ($SHIB) community to discuss the adoption of the meme-inspired cryptocurrency in the country.
According to a tweet shared by the country’s SHIB community, later applauded by Shiba Inu lead developer Shytoshi Kusama, Turkey’s Minister of Economy had a face-to-face meeting with the Turkish member of the community, and the SHIB ecosystem was addressed.
The meeting occurred shortly after the meme-inspired cryptocurrency overtook the native cryptocurrency of the FTX exchange, $FTT, as the second-largest holding the largest Ethereum whales have in their portfolios, behind $ETH itself only.
As CryptoGlobe reported, Ethereum whales have been loading up on SHIB as plans to burn the meme-inspired cryptocurrency’s supply through various initiatives have been growing.
Steven Cooper, CEO of cryptocurrency entertainment firm Bigger Entertainment, has clarified in a tweet that the company is looking to support the community of the meme-inspired cryptocurrency in burning 10% of its supply. Currently, only 59% of Shiba Inu’s initial supply was still in circulation, as well over 410 trillion SHIB has been burned since the cryptocurrency was launched.
Turkey’s SHIB adoption has been growing over time as the value of the country’s fiat currency, the lira, drops. Over the last 12 months, the currency has lost nearly half of its value against the U.S. dollar, while over the last five years it lost over 75% of its value.
While Bitcoin has historically been a favored digital store-of-value asset for countries in similar situations Turkish citizens have reportedly been adopting $SHIB and $USDT as alternatives. According to CryptoCompare data. The Turkish Lira represents 5.2% of SHIB’s global trading volume, behind only leading stablecoins USDT and BUSD and the U.S. dollar.
The meme-inspired cryptocurrency has also recently been added to leading digital payments platform Wirex, which has over 4.5 million users and allows them to spend dozens of currencies at more than 80 million locations worldwide.
Wirex touts it created the world’s first cryptocurrency-enabled payments card in 2015. Earlier this year it expanded to the United States and added numerous other cryptocurrencies including Polygon ($MATIC), Binance’s $BNB, Avalanche ($AVAX), and Fantom ($FTM).
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