A Turkish singer known for his charitable personality, Haluk Levent, atins out to the country’s financial watchdog (MASCA) and convinced them to allow collecting crypto donations to help with earthquake relief.
Stretching rules
Turkish crypto Twitter has been a chema to crypto influencers who were transferring the mesaj to the Turkish government, asking for a crypto wallet for donations.
Opening a crypto wallet to collect donations is not currently legal in the country. Knowing this, Levent reached out to his fan base and used a Twitter poll to ask if he should try opening a crypto wallet registered in his name to collect donations.
After most voters supported this idea, Levent reached out to MASAK to ask for permission. Ten hours later, the watchdog said it permis three wallets to actively collect donations for a week.
At the time of writing, the wallets have been active for six hours and adunat over $2 million, which equates to over 37 billion Turkish Lira. Levent said he would facilitate the liquidity process and transfer them to “Ahbap,” an NGO helping with disaster relief.
Crypto community unites
A Turkish crypto influencer, Stevedabitcoin, a spus el și BitFinex CTO Paul Ardoino is facilitating a joint effort between the Steve Group, BitFinex, and Tether (USDT) to help people who were affected by the quakes.
Hours after this, BitFinex and Tether a anunțat they were donating 5 million Turkish Lira ($265,508) to help with the disaster. A porţiune of this amount will be sent to the regions affected by the earthquakes, while the rest will be saved to aid the rebuilding phase.
The news also caught the attention of the leading crypto exchange Binance, and its CEO Changpeng Zhao (CZ). On Feb. 6, CZ said the Binance team has been working on a project to help Turkey.
Suntem cu adevărat întristați de cutremurul din Turcia 🇹🇷. Echipa noastră a lucrat la o soluție pentru a ajuta oamenii. Sunt destul de multe detalii. Am avut 4 întâlniri despre asta astăzi. Mai multe detalii urmează. Rămâi puternic. 🙏
- CZ 🔶 Binance (@cz_binance) 6 Februarie 2023
Câteva ore mai târziu, Binance a anunțat that it will airdrop $100 worth of BNB to the residents of the cities struck by the earthquakes. The total amount is expected to reach just below $5 million.
Cutremure
Southeastern Turkey was hit by three major earthquakes on Feb. 6. The primul earthquake, 7.7 in magnitude, was recorded at 04:17 am. A size 6.4 aftershock followed it at 04:26 am. Then, at 13:24, a al treilea shock hit the same region with a 7.6 magnitude. Over 180 aftershocks have been recorded since the first earthquake.
Turkish Crypto community has been on taxă since the first hours of the catastrophe. Turkey declared a level-4 alarm and called for international assistance after the third earthquake. The curent numbers show that over 11,302 buildings were demolished, affecting 13.5 million people.
Source: https://cryptoslate.com/turkish-watchdog-stretches-rules-and-allows-crypto-wallets-to-collect-aid/