The Middle East and North Africa spent the reporting period from July 2025 to June 2026 under a regional cloud of uncertainty, and crypto adoption reflects those pressures in vastly different ways across individual markets. The Iran conflict that began on February 28, 2026, created cross-border financial pressure that touched every market studied by analysts. On top of those geopolitical strains sat distinct market-specific challenges, including rolling internet shutdowns and crackdowns in Iran alongside a sweeping licensing transition for digital asset service providers in Türkiye.
As broader market chapters have shown, the 2026 bear market cut the total global cryptocurrency market capitalization in half while barely denting on-chain economic activity worldwide. The MENA region followed a remarkably similar pattern. The region’s aggregate crypto economy slipped from $449.6 billion to $443.3 billion, marking a minor decline of 1.4% that tracks closely with the global rate. Sixteen of the 24 MENA markets with measurable data actually registered growth. The regional total remained essentially flat because Türkiye and the United Arab Emirates, which together account for 56% of the entire regional crypto economy, moved in opposite directions and largely canceled each other out. What ultimately shaped MENA was not the bear market itself, but the complex regional disruptions layered directly on top of it.
What ties this regional narrative together is the encompassing pressure of geopolitical and economic uncertainty. When institutional capital looks for a durable, regulated hub, it concentrates heavily in the UAE. When Türkiye’s exchange sector pauses to meet new, stringent licensing requirements, retail users bypass traditional intermediaries to transact wallet-to-wallet. Each of these responses remains specific to its individual market, yet they are all reactions to the exact same regional conditions.
Türkiye’s $144.5 Billion Crypto Economy Shifts From Exchange-Dominated to Institutional
Türkiye stood as MENA’s largest cryptocurrency economy during the 2026 period, recording $144.5 billion in volume and capturing roughly a third of the entire region. This overall measure captures value received across service inflows, domestic peer-to-peer transfers, cross-border peer-to-peer transactions, and cross-border business-to-person flows. While Türkiye’s total contracted modestly year over year, industry experts emphasize that the decline reflects a market in transition rather than one in retreat. Economic activity migrated off licensed services onto wallet-to-wallet rails, even as institutional engagement from traditional banks and licensed platforms deepened. The net effect is a smaller but structurally much stronger market.
Right at the end of the study period, Türkiye began enforcing a demanding new crypto industry regulatory regime requiring all Crypto Asset Service Providers to hold official licenses issued by the financial regulator SPK. Functionally, the country now requires CASPs to follow the exact same compliance protocols as traditional financial institutions. The new law has raised the operational bar for the entire industry, according to Burcu Küçükünal, CEO of the Turkish exchange Stablex.
Crypto in Türkiye is steadily becoming a recognized part of traditional finance rather than operating as a parallel system, Küçükünal noted. Compliant exchanges are significantly better-positioned to serve institutional demands under the new system, according to industry experts. Turkish licensing criteria, operational rules, and capital requirements place the country’s crypto businesses directly in line with international standards, said Fatih Günaydın, General Manager at Işık Digital Asset Technologies, marking an important development that will likely bolster long-term growth among regulated services.
Salim Karaman, CEO of BtcTurk, Türkiye’s largest crypto exchange, observed that offering equity and crypto asset services within the same financial group, with due regard to relevant authorizations and the legal separation of activities, is increasingly on the agenda. The key change over the past twelve months has been a tangible shift from assessing interest and potential toward developing services and taking concrete steps to enter the market firmly within the regulatory framework.
Türkiye’s $3.56 Billion Peer-to-Peer Economy Encounters Regulatory Ceilings
Even with its maturing institutional landscape, Türkiye retains a flourishing grassroots crypto economy. Its peer-to-peer market grew fivefold to hit $3.56 billion during the 2026 period, making it by far the largest in the region. In fact, Türkiye’s peer-to-peer crypto economy is nearly three times larger than the rest of the MENA region combined, with nearly all of that dramatic growth concentrated in stablecoins.
While Türkiye boasts a massive peer-to-peer market, that activity is legally restricted from touching the real-world economy in ways seen in other parts of the world. In Türkiye, the use of crypto assets for payments for goods and services is strictly prohibited by regulation, explained Günaydın. However, stablecoins feature prominently in individuals’ personal savings, primarily due to the advantages of low spreads and ease of transfer. On the commercial and small-to-medium enterprise front, they are utilized to a limited extent in international trade, strictly within the limits permitted by the laws of both participating countries.
Today, most domestic activity remains focused on trading and protecting personal savings, noted Küçükünal. The appeal is straightforward: the U.S. dollar offers a stable store of value in a country where persistent lira inflation has steadily eroded household wealth, and dollar-pegged stablecoins put that stability within reach of anyone possessing a digital wallet. This exact pattern appears in high-inflation markets across the globe.
However, because the Central Bank of the Republic of Türkiye prohibits using crypto assets to pay for everyday goods and services, none of that $3.56 billion in domestic wallet-to-wallet volume moves directly between buyers and sellers in the real economy. Instead, it moves between Turkish wallets primarily as a dollar-denominated savings and transfer mechanism. Küçükünal pointed directly to this policy gap, stating that the strongest potential use cases for stablecoins in Türkiye are domestic and cross-border payments and money transfers, which remain unavailable under current rules. Establishing a clear legal framework for stablecoin-based payments could expand demand well beyond simple trading.
Changing Regulations Prompt Surge in Türkiye’s Tokenized Gold Markets
Despite their surging popularity, stablecoins are not the default savings instrument in Türkiye; that distinction belongs to physical gold, the traditional store of value for Turkish households. Turkish society’s centuries-old attachment to gold sees residents routinely stash the precious metal under mattresses, with government estimates indicating that the population hoards an astonishing 5,000 tons of gold.
During the 2026 period, market observers began to see that traditional habit move on-chain, transforming Türkiye into a world leader in the adoption of tokenized gold. Activity climbed from virtually zero in earlier reporting periods to nearly $1 billion in 2026. Küçükünal noted a substantial tokenized gold trading surge on Stablex, observing that strong demand for tokenized gold proves Turkish investors actively seek familiar, trusted assets on modern digital rails.
Exchange order book data underscores this trend. When analyzing the popularity of buying tokenized gold using the Turkish lira, researchers found it ranked as the second most popular currency globally for acquiring tokenized gold, trailing only the U.S. dollar. In fact, a greater share of Turkish lira trading volume flowed into tokenized gold than any other currency with an order book exceeding $100 million.
This digital rush coincided directly with a shift in approach by Türkiye’s Treasury and Finance Ministry regarding physical gold. In January 2026, the ministry announced a ban on purchasing physical gold jewelry and bars using cash. The stated goal of the Precious Metal Tracking System framework was curbing the informal economy and combating counterfeit gold.
The cash ban did not reduce overall demand for gold; rather, it redirected it and established a permanent new baseline for tokenized gold volumes. Trading in tokenized gold boomed immediately after the KMTS announcement. In February, trading reached $183.9 million, representing 2.51% of the entire lira order book as traders moved ahead of impending restrictions. When the rules officially came online a few months later, the initial trading rush subsided, but it stabilized at a significantly higher baseline than before. The government is already moving to formalize the trend, issuing new directives in July 2026 for regulated digital precious metal trading, which industry leaders expect will further accelerate market maturity.
The UAE’s Embrace of Crypto Businesses Pays Off
The United Arab Emirates has spent years actively courting cryptocurrency businesses as part of a wider government strategy to diversify its historically oil-dependent economy. By taking a proactive regulatory stance, the UAE has successfully positioned itself at the center of emerging global financial markets.
This successful diversification campaign helped the Emirates’ crypto economy expand during a period of intense regional uncertainty. Even as the Iran war brought regional conflict and slowed broader domestic economic growth in areas like tourism and hospitality, the UAE’s crypto economy grew by 32% to reach $104.8 billion. Excluding the UAE, the rest of the MENA region actually contracted by 8.6% rather than 1.4%. Henri Arslanian, co-founder of Nine Blocks Capital Management, the first crypto hedge fund licensed by Dubai’s virtual assets regulator VARA, noted that while the war impacted traditional sectors, the impact on the local crypto industry remained limited.
Outside of the United States, the MENA region, and particularly the UAE, has become the primary global hub for crypto firms’ operations, Arslanian added, crediting the proactive approach of UAE financial regulators in issuing clear licenses as a vital catalyst that significantly reduced career risk for corporate executives engaging with digital assets.
Laurent Girouille, Senior Executive Officer at Rain Trading Limited, observed a distinct shift in market dialogue. A year ago, regional growth conversations centered primarily on retail access, Girouille noted. Today, inquiries focus heavily on operational details, including regulated counterparties, asset custody, and settlement reconciliation originating from corporate treasuries, family offices, and licensed intermediaries rather than first-time buyers.
The underlying data confirms this institutional pivot. The UAE’s $102.3 billion services sector provided the vast majority of its crypto-economic growth during the 2026 period. This category expanded by 29% period over period, with centralized exchange inflows climbing 22% to $55 billion, and institutional platforms including custodians and market-makers surging 75% to reach $11.7 billion. Decentralized finance exchanges also recorded over $31 billion in total inflows, representing a 31% increase.
While the services sector dominated in raw economic scale, the UAE’s smaller peer-to-peer economies expanded at an even faster pace. Domestic P2P payments rose 786% period-over-period, while cross-border peer-to-peer inflows jumped 18-fold. Cross-border business payments also spiked nearly 400%, buoyed by a surge in major stablecoin transfers of $1 million or more.
Arslanian emphasized that many observers globally underestimate the heavy utilization of stablecoins in business-to-business transactions within the UAE, noting that the nation has evolved into a premier global hub for such settlements, supported by regulated over-the-counter brokers offering robust fiat offramps. Fuze Finance representatives similarly noted that stablecoins are increasingly viewed as fundamental financial infrastructure rather than mere speculative assets, pointing to growing corporate adoption for cross-border settlement, treasury management, and merchant payments.
With this rapid expansion, the UAE’s crypto economy reached nearly three-quarters the size of Türkiye’s at the close of the 2026 period. On current growth trajectories, the UAE is on pace to surpass Türkiye as MENA’s largest crypto economy by 2027.
Iran Conflict Shapes Adoption Trends in the UAE and Beyond
While the Iran war did not stunt the growth of the UAE’s crypto services sector, it coincided with a notable shift in local investment behavior: a rise in holders of tokenized gold alongside a comparative decline in bitcoin holders. As in Türkiye, where cash restrictions redirected gold demand on-chain, the catalyst in the UAE differed, but the underlying pattern remained identical. Regional uncertainty pushed investors toward familiar, trusted assets operating on modern digital rails.
Bitcoin remains vastly more popular than tokenized gold globally, but both assets function as safe-haven stores of value during periods of geopolitical tension. Gold represents a savings habit with centuries of cultural backing in the region, according to Girouille. In March 2026, when the UAE first faced direct threats from regional conflicts, the number of both bitcoin holders and tokenized gold holders climbed simultaneously.
However, the two trends diverged during the relative calm that followed. Following a disrupted ceasefire, the relative share of tokenized gold holders continued to rise in the UAE as residents accumulated the metal, while the number of bitcoin holders actively shrank. Investors who purchased bitcoin during the acute uncertainty of war dumped their holdings once tensions eased, whereas gold holders retained their positions. This stickiness highlights the deep cultural perspective of gold in the region as a long-term savings instrument rather than a short-term trading asset.
In Iran, Blackouts, Bombs, and Protests Shape Domestic Adoption
Iran hosts one of the world’s most robust crypto economies, though one heavily complicated by illicit use by the ruling regime to evade economic sanctions and fund military operations. Consequently, grassroots adoption analyses focus exclusively on everyday civilian use rather than illicit activities.
Throughout 2026, Iran’s rolling internet blackouts severely impacted civilian crypto usage. The government twice severed digital links for everyday citizens: first for 20 days in January following the suppression of economic protests, and second for 88 days immediately following the outbreak of the war. In both instances, blackouts severely inhibited digital financial access.
Data tracking Iranian personal wallets show that bitcoin transaction volumes plunged by nearly 90% during the first week of the initial blackout compared to baseline periods, only to rebound sharply once restrictions lifted. A month later, the onset of war and the second blackout triggered an 80% drop in bitcoin transactions. Crucially, activity never dropped entirely to zero; during the extended second blackout, transaction volumes gradually climbed back as resilient citizens found workarounds such as satellite internet connections. By the end of the second blackout, activity had recovered to over 75% of baseline levels, surging to nearly double baseline rates once full internet access was restored in late May.
Cross-border stablecoin flows into Iran showed similar resilience. While incoming transfers initially dropped by roughly 80% during blackouts and military conflicts, foreign senders resumed steady flows as soon as local wallets demonstrated an ability to spend. The normalization of activity following regional ceasefires quickly pushed inflows past pre-conflict baselines, demonstrating how civilian populations adapt to severe real-world crises.
Israel’s Crypto Economy Remains Steady Amid Regional Turbulence
Israel’s crypto economy held remarkably steady amid twelve months of regional turbulence, growing by a modest 0.7% period-over-period and avoiding the wider contractions seen across other bear-market jurisdictions. Trading activity drives this $37.9 billion market, with the vast majority of tracked volume consisting of inflows into centralized exchanges. Israel recorded exceptionally limited peer-to-peer activity and negligible domestic cross-border flows.
Noam Kaplan, a partner at KPMG Israel, noted that while trading and investment remain primary use cases, digital assets are increasingly explored for cross-border payments, decentralized finance, and broader blockchain services. Governing these expanding use cases is a tightening regulatory framework, with Israeli financial watchdogs issuing new rules covering stablecoins, token offerings, and capital requirements for virtual asset service providers. These measures aim to bridge the gap between Israel’s crypto industry and its traditional financial system.
Market data confirms that Israel remains predominantly a retail-driven market. Ilan Sterk, CEO of Horizon, the crypto arm of Israeli investment firm Altshuler Shaham, noted that institutional adoption has not yet reached the levels seen in larger international markets. Transfer-size data supports this assessment, showing that 98.4% of Israeli service inflows during the 2026 period were under $10,000, while transfers of $1 million or more accounted for 57% of total transferred value.
Stablecoins steadily increased their share of Israeli service inflows, rising from 48.1% in 2024 to 51.6% in 2025 and reaching 57.0% in 2026. This growth reflects a retail base buying stablecoins locally and transferring them to offshore exchanges to pursue trading opportunities unavailable on domestic platforms. Because the single Israel-domiciled exchange tracked in the data captured just 0.06% of these stablecoin inflows, Israel’s crypto economy remains functionally hosted outside its own borders.
Notably, Israel’s crypto market showed no visible statistical shift in response to the 2026 regional wars, experiencing standard drops in service inflows that mirrored global trends rather than the dramatic localized surges witnessed following the events of October 2023. By the time of the 2026 conflicts, Israeli users were operating in a market that had already absorbed prior adjustments, resulting in a steady state where local activity no longer swings wildly with each new round of geopolitical conflict.
As MENA heads into 2027, the permanence of these diverse regional shifts remains the central storyline. The UAE’s institutional buildout runs far ahead of the rest of the region, Türkiye’s retail users have durably adopted peer-to-peer and tokenized assets, and Israel has settled into a resilient market equilibrium. These diverging trajectories will continue to reflect both broader regional stability and the expanding maturation of digital finance across the Middle East and North Africa.
Crypto Wallets & Security
Crypto Wallets & Security
Crypto Wallets & Security
