Turkey is one of the many countries in the world where Bitcoin does not have a particular legal status. This opens up opportunities for entrepreneurs to start their cryptocurrency businesses. At the same time, opposition from banks and government officials is to be expected once the firm becomes rather successful.
Since launching back in 2013, BTCTurk has seen its fair share of success in the Turkish Bitcoin market. Investors could convert Turkish Lira to Bitcoin and vice versa. There have never been any noteworthy payment issues, and everyone who ever used the platform seemed to have a positive experience.
It came as a shock when BTCTurk suddenly found out their bank account has been frozen. Since their partner bank had no intention of restoring access, the company was forced to look elsewhere. Unfortunately, that proved to be much harder than anticipated, as no willing bank partner could be found.
All of the BTCTurk users who had any remaining Turkish Lira or Bitcoin balances in their account will be compensated through wire transfers. The bank which closed the company’s account in the first place will honour these transactions before wrapping their “partnership” up altogether. A sad turn of events, but it could not be helped, unfortunately.
This news begs the question how the financial situation in Turkey will evolve in the coming months. PayPal halted their services a while ago, due to not obtaining their necessary license to operate in the country. With BTCTurk shutting down as well, the options are very limited. Peer-to-peer trading of Bitcoin is still possible, though.
BTCTurk advantages
- Reasonable Commissions. The trading fees of BTCTurk are actually quite reasonable and become more attractive the more you trade.
- Accepts Fiat. BTCTurk is allowing buying and selling of cryptocurrencies for fiat currencies (just one in fact), which is exactly what your average client is looking for nowadays.
- Low Deposit/Withdrawal fees. Like most exchanges, BTCTurk charges fees for depositing and withdrawing fiat currencies by some means and for withdrawing cryptocurrencies. The fee for an instant fiat deposit or withdrawal is 1%+VAT, but not more than TRY50 (around $13). Depositing through a bank is free and the withdrawal costs TRY 3. Deposits of cryptocurrencies are free and withdrawals are for a small fee, depending on the coin.
- Own Mobile app. BTCTurk has a mobile application for Android and iOS devices. With it clients can vie current market information, place buy and sell orders, deposit and withdraw funds, view account balance and receive price notifications.
- Different types of orders. BTCTurk allows clients to place different types of orders, in addition to the simple buy and sell orders. – Market order, limit order and stop order. This is relatively rare among the cryptocurrency exchanges who usually offer only spot trading.
- Nice Platform. BTCTurk offers nice price charts from TradingView with analysis and charting tools, plus a market depth chart and an order book.
- Good Security. BTCTurk has 2 factor authentication enabled by default, plus it says it stores 95% of the client funds in offline multisignature cold storage and has geographically distributed backups.
BTCTurk disadvantages
- Few Coins. BTCTurk has a relatively limited selection of cryptocurrencies on offer, but they are among the most popular.
- Minimum deposit and withdawal requirements. The exchange has minimum deposit and withdrawal limits, mostly for fiat currencies through a bank transfer – TRY 1000. The limit for instant transfers is just TRY 10.
- No credit cards or PayPal. BTCTurk does not accept deposits through credit cards or PayPal. Nor does it accept cash deposits.
- No Anonymity. BTCTurk does not allow anonymous trading and requires that clients provide a copy of an ID document, an ID selfie and a proof of address.
- No Leverage. BTCTurk does not offer leveraged trading on its platform, like most cryptocurrency exchanges. There are many reputable regulated forex brokers who offer CFDs on some of the more popular cryptocurrencies, which can be traded on margin.
- No Regulation. BTCTurk is not regulated, but for now it does not need to be, despite the plans of the Turkish government, like many others, to put some order in the gray area of the cryptocurrencies.