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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.

This research aims to investigate the impact of missing visual information on tourists’ decision-making processes and visit intention. Drawing on perception completion law and signaling theory, the study hypothesized that tourists might use visual information to infer about a destination, even if the information is incomplete or ambiguous.

To assess the impact of missing visual information, the authors asked a group of 392 participants who had no prior familiarity with a specific garden museum to envision the interior environment of the museum garden and provide feedback on their emotional responses and aesthetic evaluations. To aid in their imagination, they were presented with a video showcasing the surrounding landscape and exterior of the museum.

The study found that participants could anticipate their overall experience of the location by inferring the resemblance of unseen areas to the images they had viewed, even without prior exposure or information. This study provides valuable insights into the cognitive processes underlying tourism decision-making and advances our understanding of how people form expectations of new and unfamiliar places.

The originality of this research relies on the mediating role of missing aesthetics and emotion on the relationship between available aesthetics and visit intention using a structural model. This study highlights the significant role of visual information in influencing tourist decision-making, even with incomplete or ambiguous data.