Challenges triggers creativity and motivates innovation..
Turkey being one of the top countries in owning and using crypto currencies (source Statista) has introduced a new regulation recently. Here comes briefly my thoughts with a few notes on the regulation related with ‘use of crypto currencies for payments’ introduced by the Central Bank of the Republic of Turkey which will be effected by April, 30.
-Good news is that; for the first time ‘crypto assets’ are defined within a legal framework by the Turkish government
-No ban on trading, owning, storing of crypto currencies, this is still legal
-Exchanges are not included in the scope of the regulation. As bank transfers are still allowed to deposit, no harm on crypto exchanges and traders, however this might be interpreted as a kind of negative impact on the financial inclusion context
-Crypto assets cannot be used as a means of payment directly or indirectly and the service providers cannot provide such services where a crypto asset is used as a means of payment. Fintech and e-money companies & solutions will no more be allowed to process payments/transfers with crypto currencies according to this regulation.
-Puzzling part is the possible negative effect on the highly invested fintech solutions projects. As well for the new coming innovative blockchain and crypto payment projects designed to be integrated into the business models to provide crypto payment level of the service might slow down.
Hoping my country does not miss the opportunity to be one of the important producers of the distributed ledger technology and I do trust the regulation might be revised accordingly with the new coming regulational details on crypto assets.