IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/h/eme/reanzz/s0190-128120240000043003.html
   My bibliography  Save this book chapter

In Pursuit of Stability? An Ethnographic Inquiry of Cryptocurrency Trading in Istanbul

In: Health, Money, Commerce, and Wealth

Author

Listed:
  • Wesam Hassan

Abstract

By drawing on 18-month ethnographic fieldwork conducted among people who participate in state-regulated games of chance in Istanbul, during the recent Turkish economic crisis in 2021–2022, and engaging with scholarly work on the anthropology of Turkey, economic anthropology and local media and grey resources, this article illustrates the rise of cryptocurrency trading in Turkey. This article shows how my participants situated the cryptocurrency trading within their own techniques to ameliorate financial volatility and to compensate their mistrust in governmental financial institutions during times of economic turbulence. Cryptocurrency trading was viewed as an investment technique that assists in accumulating savings for ensuring the future amid fluctuating national currency and polarized political realities. Meanwhile, cryptocurrency trading was also identified as a game of chance that swings between hinging on luck or skill, and the research participants debated if cryptocurrency trading is permissible in Islam (Halal) or forbidden. Therefore, this article suggests that cryptocurrency trading, although on the rise, is still a contested topic in which the boundaries between perceptions and practices of investing and gambling are blurred within the Turkish context. The controversy of the cryptocurrency trading emerges from the polarized public attitudes and the dissonance between traditional ideals, that condemn easy money and emphasize the value of hard work, in contrast to the neoliberal realities of capitalistic modes of accumulation that encourages speculation over production.

Suggested Citation

  • Wesam Hassan, 2024. "In Pursuit of Stability? An Ethnographic Inquiry of Cryptocurrency Trading in Istanbul," Research in Economic Anthropology, in: Health, Money, Commerce, and Wealth, volume 43, pages 23-42, Emerald Group Publishing Limited.
    • Handle: RePEc:eme:reanzz:s0190-128120240000043003
    DOI: 10.1108/S0190-128120240000043003
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/S0190-128120240000043003/full/html?utm_source=repec&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=repec
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers
    File URL: https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/S0190-128120240000043003/full/pdf?utm_source=repec&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=repec
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers
    File URL: https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/S0190-128120240000043003/full/epub?utm_source=repec&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=repec&title=10.1108/S0190-128120240000043003
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1108/S0190-128120240000043003?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to

    for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eme:reanzz:s0190-128120240000043003. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Emerald Support (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.