Turkey is the first university blockchain center in the country

Turkey established the country's first blockchain university center, with the goal of bridging the blockchain skills gap and ensuring a widespread diffusion of technology, the local daily newspaper Sabah reported on 3 August.

The Blockchainist and the innovation center of Istanbul (BlockchainIST Centro) was inaugurated at the Bahçeşehir University (BAU). According to the director of the center, Bora Erdamar, BlockchainIST is intended to be "the most important research and development and innovation center in Turkey where scientific studies and publications are made in blockchain technologies".

Erdamar said that Turkey could have a chance to become the leading country in technology that "will transform humanity". He emphasized the importance of cooperation with other educational institutions, businesses and government institutions to conduct appropriate blockchain research and examine possible use cases.

Meanwhile, other universities around the world have already embraced the advantages of distributed ledger technology, offering blockchain courses, smart contracts and cryptocurrency.

Only this year, Stanford University founded the Center for Blockchain Research, supported in part by the Ethereum Foundation, and the main Brazilian university Fundação Getúlio Vargas started offering the cou The first master of ntry in cryptofinancial . Ripple also donated $ 50 million to 17 universities globally to support blockchain and crypto education.

While the director of BlockchainIST stressed that Turkey is becoming digitalized and is making great efforts to keep pace with the rest of the world in digital transformation, the Turkish authorities have demonstrated an ambiguous position towards the industry crypto.

Last November, the government of the country took a tough stance on Bitcoin (BTC), when legislators of the Directorate for Religious Affairs of the state declared that BTC is "not compatible" with Islam. However, in February this year, the vice-president of the Turkish nationalist movement party not only proposed market regulations, but also mentioned the possibility of a national digital currency, called TurkCoin.