Crypto community turns to help Turkey after massive earthquakes

In the early hours of Monday (Feb. 6), Turkey was hit by a deadly earthquake. It started around the town of Pazarcik in Kahramanmaras province, but it didn’t end there. Several powerful aftershocks followed, calculated at a 7.8 magnitude. The dead count is now over 5,000 people, with hundreds still trapped in the fallen buildings. Seeing this, the crypto community wants to help Turkey.

At least 65 blockchain and web3 institutions in the country have already made an official petition к the government to accept cryptocurrencies for donations. They want to set up official wallets to easily access aid from all parts of the globe. Besides, this would thwart the efforts of мошенники already asking for crypto with this excuse.

“We want the Disaster and Emergency Management Presidency and the Red Crescent to create official crypto asset wallets and share them through official channels in the digital environment. In this way, the humanitarian aid to Turkey by the actors in the blockchain ecosystem all over the world will be paved and malicious aid accounts will be prevented.”

In addition to this, several crypto brands and individuals worldwide are already providing help or planning to do so. A team member of the crypto wallet Galoy is collecting Биткойн (BTC) donations, also via Сеть Lightning. He’s planning to liquidate in Turkish Lira and send it to the NGO Ahbap to help the victims.

So far, the wallet balance is over $1,000 in BTC. Meanwhile, crypto companies like Bybit, BitMEX, Bitfinex, Gate.io, Huobi, BitGet, and Binance have already offered aid packages and millions in donations for Turkey. It’s not clear if that includes Syria, also harshly affected by the disaster.

The situation of crypto in Turkey

Sadly, the regulatory background for cryptocurrencies in Turkey isn’t the best. They’re legal to trade in the country, but not for any kind of payment. The government banned the payments for goods and services by using these assets, since April 30, 2021. Strict Anti-Money Laundering (AML) measures started to apply to crypto businesses as well.

However, their views about blockchain and cryptos have been changing for the better since then. More recently, the Nation Alliance (Turkey’s political opposition group) вышел a doctrine that included crypto adoption. They want to use blockchain for public registries, documents, and other systems (like jobs).

Помимо, they’re aiming to create a proper regulatory framework and taxes for crypto coins in Turkey. Back in 2022, the government also explored the Metaverse in the education field, and they drafted a bill to set new guidelines for crypto exchanges. Of course, all of this is stand-by now, considering the earthquakes.

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