ISTANBUL — Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is set to meet on 20 January with the leader of El Salvador, the first country to make bitcoin legal tender, while the Turkish central bank kept interest rates on hold in a move that will likely do little to arrest the country’s currency crisis.

With El Salvador planning to launch a $1bn bitcoin-backed bond, Turks and foreign investors are watching closely to see if the meeting between Erdogan and President Nayib Bukele in Ankara marks a shift in how Turkey’s government views cryptocurrencies, despite the past month’s slump in bitcoin’s dollar value.