Turkey establishes the first Blockchain center of the country's university

Turkey established the first university-level blockchain center in the country, with the objective of closing the blockchain expert gap and ensuring a broad deployment of the technology, local newspaper Daily Sabah reported. 3.

The Blockchain and Innovation Center of Istanbul (BlockchainIST Center) was inaugurated at the University of Bahçeşehir (BAU). According to the director of the center, Bora Erdamar, BlockchainIST will become "the most important center of research and development and innovation in Turkey in which scientific studies and publications are made in blockchain technologies".

Erdamar said Turkey could have the opportunity to become the leading country in technology that "will transform humanity." He underscored the importance of cooperation with other educational establishments, businesses and government institutions to carry out appropriate blockchain investigations and examine possible use cases.

Meanwhile, other universities around the world have already adopted the benefits of distributed ledger technology, which offers blockchain, smart contracts and courses related to cryptocurrencies.

Only this year, Stanford University established the Blockchain Research Center, supported in part by the Ethereum Foundation, and the main Brazilian university, the Getúlio Vargas Foundation, began offering the first master's degree in crypto-finance in the country. Ripple also donated $ 50 million to 17 universities around the world to support blockchain and crypto education.

While the director of BlockchainIST stressed that Turkey is digitizing and making great efforts to keep pace with the rest of the world in the digital transformation, the Turkish authorities have shown an ambiguous stance towards the cryptography industry.

Last November, the country's government adopted a tough position on Bitcoin (BTC), when lawmakers from the state's Directorate of Religious Affairs said BTC "is not compatible" with Islam. However, in February of this year, the vice president of the Nationalist Movement Party of Turkey not only proposed regulations for the market, but also mentioned the possibility of a national digital currency, called TurkCoin.