The Turkish government intends to establish its central bank digital currency (CBDC) by next year. The President’s Annual Plan for 2023, which discusses a CBDC, reportedly was presented by Turkey’s Presidential Strategy and Budget Office.
According to rumors, the Turkish Central Bank will launch a CBDC in 2019. A “blockchain-based central bank digital currency will be established,” the plan declares under the subheading “Policies and Measures” in the President’s Annual Plan for the upcoming year. The plan’s implementation will be the responsibility of the Central Bank of Turkey, with assistance from the regional Ministry of Finance and scientific and technological research organizations.
The declaration follows the central bank’s September 2021 revelation that it was thinking about developing a CBDC to supplement its current payments infrastructure, a project known as the “Central Bank Digital Turkish Lira Research and Development.”
Official records state:
The Digital Turkish Lira system will be integrated with digital identity and FAST.
The nation’s central bank manages the FAST payment system. The mandate further specifies that the central bank must work with other banks to conduct research, development, and testing on its soon-to-be-issued CBDC.
The establishment of a CBDC might be a hint that the Turkish government has changed its mind about digital assets. In April 2021, the Turkish Central Bank famously outlawed cryptocurrencies. The purchase of goods and services via cryptocurrency payments would be prohibited, the central bank announced in a statement.
The legislation did leave some room for interpretation in that deposits in Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are still possible. Furthermore, since bitcoin transactions on exchanges are not considered “payments,” the new legislation still permits them.
Turkey has experienced a boom in cryptocurrency trading, realizing more than a million trades every day despite the country’s ban on the currency. The rise in trading activity coincides with the Lira, the local currency, hitting historic lows and people flocking to cryptocurrencies to save their shrinking funds.
