Central Asia has a well-established history of civil society and protest, yet the implications of this instability have not been evaluated quantitatively. More broadly, the negative association between conflict and exchange rates is known, but only at a large scale and without daily protest data. This paper analyzes violence and data in Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan from 2018 to October 2022 to determine the role that protest participation has on the exchange rate between these countries. Results from a distributed lag model and bivariate wavelet coherence analysis suggest that cumulative effect of political protest participation in Kazakhstan causes a significant and substantial devaluation of its currency relative to Kyrgyzstan’s, and wavelet coherence analysis shows both long- and short-term impacts of political violence on exchange rate. Though intuitive, these conclusions can help policymakers control currency volatility and reduce uncertainty.