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| Turkey started the war on cryptocurrencies |
Turkey announced in a presidential decree issued on Saturday that it has added cryptocurrency trading platforms to the list of companies subject to anti-money laundering and terrorist financing regulations.
The move came after Turkey's central bank banned the use of crypto assets for payments last month, citing the risks associated with such transactions.
The ban, which went into effect in Turkey on Friday, was enacted in response to allegations that such transactions could cause irreparable harm.
The presidential decree makes it responsible for crypto asset service providers not to unlawfully use their assets, and the decree will take effect upon its publication in the Turkish Official Gazette.
Turkish authorities investigated fraud on two cryptocurrency exchanges, Thodex and Vebitcoin, last month.
Six of the suspects involved in the Thodex investigation have been sentenced to prison terms pending trial, including the brother of the platform's general manager, Faruk Fatih Ozer, whom Turkish authorities attempted to track after his trip to Albania.
INTERPOL has issued an arrest warrant for the company's CEO, on behalf of Turkey.
A Thodex investigation (which processed hundreds of millions of dollars in transactions every day) initially arrested 83 people over complaints from customers that they could not use their money.
Cryptocurrencies are increasingly luring Turks to withstand the effects of a falling lira and rising inflation, and the central bank ban has raised concerns that holding cryptocurrencies will not become illegal in the future.
Before the government began the campaign, the estimated daily circulation of recommended digital currencies around the world was $ 2 billion, with Turkey accounting for 16% of the total and ranking fourth.
With increasing social recognition, the price of cryptocurrency has recently skyrocketed, and companies like Tesla have started accepting bitcoin as a form of payment.
The CEO of the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) slammed Bitcoin earlier this year on the grounds that Bitcoin has no intrinsic value and consumes more electricity than Switzerland as a whole.
The Bank for International Settlements, which serves the interests of the Federal Reserve, the Bank of England, and other countries, warned this month that digital currency regulation is still in its infancy and that many major global economies are still developing a method for encrypting assets.
The Turkish government appears to have many reasonable regulatory concerns regarding the dual risk of money laundering and terrorist financing.