Istanbul Blockchain Week founder Erhan Korhaliller discusses why Turkey is one of the hottest places for crypto

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Cryp­toSlate had the oppor­tu­ni­ty to sit down with Erhan Korhaliller, Founder & CEO of EAK Dig­i­tal, the web3 com­mu­ni­ca­tions and events agency behind some of the industry’s most cre­ative IRL events, as he puts plans togeth­er for the much antic­i­pat­ed Istan­bul Blockchain Week.

Why is the Turk­ish mar­ket so hot for crypto?

Turkey has been fight­ing high infla­tion and inter­est rates for some time now, a long time before it start­ed seep­ing into the inter­na­tion­al mar­ket. The offi­cial infla­tion rate of Turkey cur­rent­ly sits at 78.6% for the month of June; this has led Turk­ish peo­ple to look for alter­na­tive assets in which to pre­serve and expand their wealth.

Turkey also has a very suc­cess­ful mobile gam­ing mar­ket; in a recent report, it was stat­ed that 79% of adults in Turkey play games, so peo­ple are used to swap­ping in and out of tokens and coins, and I sus­pect Turkey will play a key role in the upcom­ing surge of web3 gam­ing that we are going to see in the next few years.

What sec­tors of the web3 indus­try are par­tic­u­lar­ly hot in Turkey right now?

Turkey has a huge amount of retail traders; this has led to many of the major exchanges build­ing a Turk­ish pres­ence, includ­ing Binance, Huo­bi and FTX, and more. In my dis­cus­sions with exchanges, I have been told reg­u­lar­ly that Turkey is in the top 2/3 mar­kets for trad­ing on their plat­forms. In addi­tion to the inter­na­tion­al exchanges, there are big nation­al exchanges cur­rent­ly post­ing huge vol­umes, such as BTC Turk and Paribu. 

Turkey has always been a huge mar­ket for mobile gam­ing, and there con­tin­ues to be an extreme­ly large gam­ing com­mu­ni­ty in Turkey that are ripe to be onboard­ed into web3. We plan to enable that at Istan­bul Blockchain Week at our W3E cham­pi­onships, the world’s first Web3 gam­ing championships.

What inspired you to organ­ise Istan­bul Blockchain Week?

Oth­er than my Turk­ish her­itage, as the founder of EAK Dig­i­tal, a web3 cre­ative com­mu­ni­ca­tions agency since 2017, we have part­nered with many events as their PR part­ner as well as worked with high-pro­file clients such as Binance, XX Net­work, Theta Net­work, Neo, etc., as our agency grew our net­work grew with it. In 2019, I decid­ed to explore the Turk­ish web3 events land­scape and I was very dis­ap­point­ed at what I found.

There were no major events tak­ing place in Turkey and the events I could find had ques­tion­able speak­ers and char­ac­ters in the space typ­i­cal­ly known of shilling and ques­tion­able projects. In addi­tion to this, the Turk­ish econ­o­my was strug­gling whilst adop­tion in the coun­try was explod­ing. This inspired me to launch Istan­bul Blockchain Week, the pre­mier web3 event in Eura­sia,  in which we invite real builders, edu­ca­tors, thought lead­ers and top busi­ness peo­ple both in Turkey and inter­na­tion­al­ly to launch an event that Turkey can be tru­ly proud of.

What is the cur­rent reg­u­la­tion for cryp­to in Turkey?

In Turkey, it is ille­gal to use cryp­to as a form of pay­ment how­ev­er it is not ille­gal to trade cryp­tocur­ren­cies. Aside from this, they’re hasn’t been clear reg­u­la­tion guide­lines set by the gov­ern­ment. Pres­i­dent Erdoğan said the leg­is­la­tion regard­ing cryp­to assets is ready for the par­lia­ment, with no clear date as to when this would come into prac­tice. We are hope­ful for reg­u­la­tions that allow for the space for inno­va­tion and growth to con­tin­ue in the cryp­to asset space in Turkey.

What might sur­prise some peo­ple is that Pres­i­dent Erdo­gan, after meet­ing with Tes­la com­pa­ny CEO Elon Musk, announced that TOGG, the domes­tic car brand of Turkey, will coop­er­ate with the Avalanche blockchain. He also stat­ed that Turkey should be one of the lead­ing coun­tries in the Meta­verse uni­verse in Jan­u­ary of this year.

What are the key high­light events of the Istan­bul blockchain week?

The week kicks off with a 1 day NFT Day ded­i­cat­ed to all things NFT/Metaverse and gam­ing, this will be a high­ly curat­ed line­up of lead­ers of the NFT space with­in Turkey and Inter­na­tion­al­ly. We then move into the main event of the week, Istan­Block, which is a two-day event that will fea­ture Turk­ish gov­ern­ment speak­ers, large multi­na­tion­al com­pa­nies, and of course, web3 heavy­weight thought leaders.

Fol­low­ing the main event, we are extreme­ly excit­ed to be launch­ing the W3E Cham­pi­onships, the world’s first Web3 gam­ing cham­pi­onship. We have a ded­i­cat­ed 600-seat E‑Sports are­na in Istan­bul for the finals of the cham­pi­onship, which includes some of the top games in web3. Gamers must enter the qual­i­fy­ing tour­na­ments for the cham­pi­onships tak­ing place in August and Sep­tem­ber before the final­ists descend to Istan­bul for one final epic showdown.

Who are some of the head­line names plan­ning to speak at Istan­bul Blockchain Week?

At this year’s Istan­bul Blockchain Week, we are focus­ing on a num­ber of dif­fer­ent areas in the indus­try split across the dif­fer­ent events. You can expect a whole host of speak­ers from lead­ers in web3 along­side main­stream web2 brands that are break­ing into web3. Its been fas­ci­nat­ing to watch the likes of Tiffanys and Adi­das recent­ly expand into web3 and we want to host events that facil­i­tate such partnerships.

In addi­tion, at Istan­Block, the flag­ship event of Istan­bul Blockchain Week, atten­dees can expect lead­ing fig­ures in web3 and leg­endary fig­ures like David Chaum, a leg­endary cryp­tog­ra­ph­er and pio­neer along­side top ven­ture cap­i­tal funds and insti­tu­tions. We will also have a strong NFT/Gaming/Metaverse pres­ence at NFT Day and the Web3Esports Cham­pi­onships with speak­ers expect­ed who have worked on some of the biggest games AAA+ games to join the conversation.

Why should peo­ple attend Istan­bul Blockchain week?

Istan­bul Blockchain Week rep­re­sents the best oppor­tu­ni­ty for the inter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty to enter the ram­pant Turk­ish cryp­to com­mu­ni­ty, and build rela­tion­ships with traders, influ­encers, thought lead­ers, gov­ern­ment, and large mul­ti-nation­al firms look­ing for part­ners to break into web3.

At Istan­bul Blockchain Week, we have a range of events that are suit­able too many dif­fer­ent pro­files of atten­dees. Whether you are an NFT enthu­si­ast, a major business/bank piv­ot­ing to web3, or an avid gamer, there is some­thing for you.

 Istan­bul is an icon­ic his­toric city and the excite­ment for web3 is pal­pa­ble, you only have to spend half a day in Istan­bul to see how large it is here. Seem­ing­ly wher­ev­er you look there is a ref­er­ence to cryp­to from adver­tis­ing in the air­port, local trams, and bus­es to phys­i­cal exchange shops out­side the famous Grand Bazaar.

The Turk­ish peo­ple are some of the most devot­ed and excit­ed about web3 and cryp­tocur­ren­cy and the event is a major oppor­tu­ni­ty for projects who want to reach a new recep­tive audi­ence or meet their exist­ing Turk­ish community.

Connect with Erhan Korhaliller

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