Mustafa Elitas, Deputy Chairman of the AK Party Group and Minister of Economy of Turkey, is said to have spoken with members of the Turkish Shiba Inu community and had a discussion regarding the country’s adoption plans for the meme-inspired cryptocurrency. The meeting took place just after the meme-inspired cryptocurrency surpassed FTT, the native cryptocurrency of the FTX exchange, as the second-biggest position in the largest Ethereum whales’ portfolios, trailing only ETH itself.
According to CryptoGlobe, Ethereum whales have been stockpiling SHIB as their intentions to destroy the meme-inspired cryptocurrency’s supply through multiple initiatives have grown.
Steven Cooper, CEO of bitcoin entertainment startup Bigger Entertainment, also confirmed in a tweet that the company intends to help the meme-inspired cryptocurrency community by burning 10% of its supply. Only 59 percent of Shiba Inu’s original supply is still in circulation, with over 410 trillion SHIB burned since the cryptocurrency’s inception.
Turkey’s adoption of SHIB has increased over time as the value of the country’s fiat currency, the lira, has fallen. Over the previous year, the currency lost about half of its value versus the US dollar, and over the last five years, it has lost more than 75% of its value. While Bitcoin has historically been a preferred digital store of value for countries in comparable circumstances, Turkish individuals are apparently using SHIB and USDT as substitutes. According to statistics from CryptoCompare, the Turkish Lira accounts for 5.2 percent of SHIB’s worldwide trading volume, trailing only the major stablecoins USDT and BUSD, as well as the US dollar.
The meme-inspired cryptocurrency was also recently added to Wirex, a prominent digital payments network with over 4.5 million users who can spend dozens of currencies at more than 80 million places globally. Wirex moved to the United States earlier this year and included a slew of other cryptocurrencies, including Polygon (MATIC), Binance (BNB), Avalanche (AVAX), and Fantom (FTM).
