Turkish Central Bank Bans Using Crypto-assets in Payments
Turkish Central Bank’s (“TCB”) regulation on “not using crypto-assets” in payments (“Regulation”) was promulgated in today’s official gazette and shall enter into force on 30th April 2021.
Regulation is comprised of 6 Articles. Articles 1, 2, 5, 6 regulate typical issues of purpose and scope, grounds, effective date on which the Regulation shall enter into force, and the authority responsible for enforcing the Regulation, respectively. With 4 of its 6 Articles being typical boiler-plate provisions, the Regulation might seem insignificant at first glance, but this could not be further from the truth as the remaining 2 articles implement a practical ban on using crypto-assets for payments in Turkey.
Core Provisions
Article 3 and 4 of the Regulation read as follows:
“Article 3: Not Using Crypto-assets in Payments[1]
(1) For the purposes of this Regulation, crypto-assets (“kripto varlık” in Turkish) means intangible assets that are created virtually using the distributed ledger technology or a similar technology, distributed through digital networks, and not classified as fiat money, bank money[2], electronic money, payment instrument, security or capital market instrument.
(2) Crypto-assets cannot be used in…
