Turkish lira stablecoins outpace euro tokens at Zodia

Zodia Markets, the crypto unit majority-owned by Standard Chartered, processed $3.4 billion in transactions involving Turkish lira stablecoins in 2025. That volume made the lira Zodia’s second-most-used stablecoin currency after dollar-pegged tokens and ahead of euro-pegged tokens.

Dollar-pegged stablecoins recorded about $110.5 billion in activity at Zodia, while euro-pegged stablecoins totaled only tens of millions of dollars in supply. Zodia’s data show lira activity concentrated on payment corridors that move Turkish fiat into global crypto liquidity pools.

Clients used lira-pegged tokens as an on-ramp to dollar settlement because tokens offered faster and cheaper settlement than correspondent-banked transfers. Nick Philpott, Zodia’s co-founder and interim chief executive, noted that clients preferred lira-pegged stablecoins because ‘the tokens settled faster, more reliably, and more cheaply, and Zodia could liquidate them on receipt.’

Standard Chartered research, led by Geoffrey Kendrick, estimated that up to $1 trillion could move from bank deposits in emerging markets into stablecoins over a three-year period. The bank identified high-risk economies including Turkey, Egypt, Pakistan and Nigeria where dollar tokens are often used as a substitute for dollar bank accounts and as a store of value against local currency weakness.

Local-currency stablecoins have a different use: they act as a settlement layer linking domestic fiat to dollar liquidity on crypto markets. Global issuers and local platforms have been building that corridor. Ripple has introduced a dollar-backed token to Turkey through partnerships with local platforms. BiLira’s TRYB is backed by reserves held in domestic banks and settled through the country’s largest over-the-counter desk. Turkey processes nearly $200 billion in annual crypto volume, which supports heavy local usage.

Regulatory and supervisory questions arise because reserves backing lira tokens are held in Turkish banks. Rapid swaps between lira and dollar tokens during periods of currency stress could accelerate outflows from those banks. Central banks and supervisors may need to consider how widely used local-currency stablecoins affect monetary transmission and bank funding; the International Monetary Fund has raised similar concerns in other markets where dollar tokens have expanded.

European authorities are pursuing a different approach. A consortium of 37 banks across 15 countries has backed a project to issue a MiCA-compliant euro stablecoin, targeting issuance in the second half of 2026, and the European Central Bank continues work on a retail digital euro. Zodia’s figures indicate that euro-denominated tokens remain small in supply compared with dollar and targeted local tokens.