Mega launches first onchain Turkish Lira carry trade market

For decades, the FX carry trade has been Wall Street’s favorite way to print money while everyone else sleeps. Borrow in a low-yield currency, park it in a high-yield one, and pocket the spread. Now that playbook is running onchain for the first time with the Turkish Lira. The wiTRY-USDM lending market went live on July 29 on MegaETH, allowing users to post wiTRY, a yield-bearing wrapped version of the tokenized Turkish Lira stablecoin iTRY, as collateral to borrow USDM. The market was built by Featherlend on Morpho, and it represents the first onchain FX carry trade involving the Lira. How the carry trade actually works Turkey’s central bank has kept policy rates at eye-watering levels, with reference yields around 45% APY flowing through regulated Turkish money market funds. Those MMFs back wiTRY, meaning the token’s yield reflects real, regulated financial instruments. The mechanics go like this: a user stakes iTRY to receive wiTRY, which captures the underlying MMF yields through a supply expansion mechanism. That wiTRY then gets posted as collateral on the Morpho market, where the user borrows USDM against it. The spread between the roughly 45% APY earned on wiTRY and the cost...