Fatma Ozkul has been a lecturer at Marmara University in Istanbul since 2012, with an academic focus on accounting, finance, auditing, blockchain and digital assets.
According to reports, professor Fatma Ozkul, an authority on blockchain technology and cryptocurrency assets, has been added to the monetary body of the central bank of Turkey by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.
Ozkul’s nomination was announced on December 22, according to Bloomberg. Her areas of expertise are accounting, finance, and auditing. She joined Marmara University in Istanbul as a lecturer in 2012. In 2022, she wrote a book on crypto asset accounting; according to her university profile, her research interests include blockchain technology and digital assets.
Ozkul has recently joined the Monetary Policy Committee of Turkey’s central bank, whose main responsibility is to determine the benchmark interest rate in order to manage inflation. On December 21, the Committee increased the interest rate in the nation by 2.5 percentage points to 42.5% in response to Turkey’s inflation rate surpassing 61.98% in November.
After winning the general election in May, Erdoğan reportedly assembled a new economic team, naming former Goldman Sachs banker Hafize Gaye Erkan as a governor of the central bank. The first test of the Digital Turkish Lira, the central bank’s own virtual currency, was successfully carried out in 2022. The nation’s adoption of cryptocurrencies has been aided by the economic environment.
Turkey is just behind the US, India, and the UK in terms of raw cryptocurrency transaction volumes, ranking fourth globally with roughly $170 billion in activity between July 2022 and June 2023, according to a report from blockchain analytics company Chainalysis.
Turkish authorities are purportedly considering regulations for their cryptocurrency market in response to the surge in cryptocurrency transactions, with an emphasis on taxation and licencing in order to take the nation off the Financial Action Task Force’s (FATF) “grey list.”
The impending regulations, which will address everything from capital adequacy standards, digital security enhancements, custody services, and reserve verifications, are anticipated to set precise licencing requirements in order to prevent system misuse.