President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan of Turkey has named Professor Fatma Ozkul, a highly knowledgeable individual in the field of crypto assets and blockchain technology, to the committee responsible for determining the interest rate at the central bank.
According to a story that was published by Bloomberg not too long ago, the nomination of Ozkul was declared in a decree on the 22nd of December.
Since the year 2012, Ozkul has been working as a lecturer at Marmara University in Istanbul, where he mostly teaches accounting, finance, and auditing principles.
Her knowledge encompasses blockchain technology as well as digital assets, and according to her university profile, she even wrote a book on crypto asset accounting in 2022. Her experience extends to both of these areas.
It is now official that Ozkul has been appointed to the Monetary Policy Committee of Turkey's central bank. The major job of this committee is to determine the benchmark interest rate in order to maintain inflation control.
As a reaction to Turkey's inflation rate exceeding 61.98% in November, the committee decided to raise the country's interest rate by 2.5 percentage points, bringing it up to 42.5%. This decision was made on December 21.
Following his victory in the general election held in Turkey in May, Erdoğan announced the formation of a new economic team, which included the appointment of Hafize Gaye Erkan, a former banker at Goldman Sachs, to the position of governor of the central bank.
It was in the year 2022 that the central bank of Turkey successfully carried out the first test of its very own digital currency, which was called the Digital Turkish Lira.
Turkish Cryptocurrency Adoption Is Exploding
A survey by Chainalysis, a company that specializes in blockchain analytics, found that Turkey has experienced a boom in the adoption of cryptocurrencies, and the nation currently ranks fourth globally in terms of the raw number of cryptocurrency transactions.
According to the analysis, Turkey saw nearly $170 billion in cryptocurrency activity between July 2022 and June 2023. This places Turkey closely behind the United States of America, India, and the United Kingdom in terms of cryptocurrency activity.
To add insult to injury, a poll that was carried out earlier this year revealed that Turkish people are increasingly resorting to cryptocurrency investments as the country continues to suffer from rising prices.
As shown by the poll, more than fifty percent of the Turkish population is now engaged in the cryptocurrency market.
The number of crypto investors in the nation has increased by 12% over the previous 18 months, with data climbing from 40% in November 2021 to an astonishing 52% by May 2023. This marks a significant increase in the number of crypto investors in the country.
Especially in light of the enormous devaluation of the Turkish lira by more than fifty percent in comparison to the United States dollar, the findings demonstrated a growing interest in and acceptance of cryptocurrencies as a means of protecting citizens against inflation.
There has been a significant shift in the demographics of crypto investors among Turkish adults over the course of the previous year and a half, according to the poll, which also showed this fact.
Women's involvement rates, particularly among younger generations, are showing an increasing trend, despite the fact that males continue to dominate the market with a share of 57%.
To be more specific, over half (47%) of cryptocurrency investors between the ages of 18 and 30 are female, which suggests that the gender gap is shrinking as the use of cryptocurrency grows more prevalent.
As a result of the rise in the number of cryptocurrency transactions, the Turkish government is apparently contemplating the implementation of regulatory measures for the cryptocurrency market in the nation.
