Turkey established the first-university level blockchain center in order to increase deployment of the technology and a goal to reduce the blockchain expertise gap reported local news outlet Daily Sabah on August 3.
The Istanbul Blockchain and Innovation Center is a unique center which was inaugurated at Bahçeşehir University (BAU) on Friday. Bora Erdamar, who is the director of BlockchainIST center stated,
“The BlockchainIST Center is set to become the most important center of research and development and innovation in Turkey in which scientific studies and publications are made in blockchain technologies.”
The director further stated that Turkey might have an amazing chance to become the best country in blockchain technology which will instantly “transform humanity”. He highlighted the importance of cooperation and partnership with other educational establishments, businesses, and government institutions to lead appropriate blockchain research and examine all the possible outcomes.
Currently, Turkey is not the first company which praises the advantages of blockchain technology, crypto-related courses, and smart contracts. Various Universities around the globe have already launched the blockchain technology center to conduct blockchain research.
In the beginning of 2018, Stanford University established the Blockchain Research Center, partly backed up by Ethereum Foundation. Moreover, Fundação Getúlio Vargas, a popular Brazilian University started providing its students with a master degree in Crypto-finance. Apart from this, Ripple donated $50 million to 17 Universities across the globe to increase the education of Blockchain and Cryptocurrency.
However, Blockchain IST's director highlighted that Turkey is moving towards digitization and continuously improving itself to maintain its position with the rest of the countries. But, the Turkish authorities have exhibited an unclear attitude towards the crypto industry.
In November 2017, the legal authorities have taken a hard step on Bitcoin (BTC), when the lawmakers of the state Directorate of Religious Affairs stated that Bitcoin is “not compatible” with Islam. Later, this year, the authorities are planning to launch a national digital currency known as TurkCoin.
