Turkish President Announced War On Cryptocurrenices: Report

The Turkish president and his government have just announced war against cryptocurrencies since, in 2020, the country had high crypto adoption rates. The statistics show that the country had one of the biggest exposures to crypto as the polls showed that about 16% of the Turkish citizens own crypto so let’s find out more in our latest crypto news.

The reason for the high volume is often attributed to the unregulated environment which was thriving for years now and Turkey made itself a name as a crypto-friendly country. Sadly, the crypto boom is now going to meet the long arm of the state. Like many across the world, the Turkish citizens chose bitcoin in order to gain from its bull run in the past year while also hoping to get protection against inflation.

This year, Turkey’s unregulated market came under scrutiny and the government started to tighten the restrictions and also impose a tax regime. The Turkish Ministry of Treasury and Finance was extremely concerned about crypto and announced a new collaboration on the topic with local regulators. The government announced legislation to ban the use of crypto as payments for services and goods. The official newsletter of the Turkish government carried the news and the ban came into effect on April 30. in a statement explaining the reason, the bank said that the transactions carried out through the use of crypto present irrevocable risks. The crypto assets are either subject to regulation and supervision or a central authority so their market values can be highly volatile according to the central bank.

It’s also cited the use in illegal actions due to their anonymous structures but the investments were not considered illegal. Exchanges in turkey could still facilitate crypto trading and right after the payment ban news, the local media reported that there was a collapse of two Turkish crypto exchanges: Vebitcoin and Thodex so the investors suffered major losses. The Turkish authorities issued an arrest warrant for the CEO of Thodex exchange after he fled to Albania’s capital Tirana with $2 billion in investors’ assets. The Central Bank Governor said that the Finance Ministry was working on other regulations regarding crypto after the incident.

Before that, many businesses in Turkey started accepting payments out of convenience and if the sector was better regulated, there would be potential for even more transactions. The Turkish president however said there is a separate war on crypto as a response to the Central Bank opening up to crypto. Erdogan claimed that the country doesn’t have a problem with the spread of crypto and added that they will not give crypto priority but will carry on with their own money that is a part of the national identity.