CRYPTO-ASSET COMMUNIQUÉS REVIEW – III
1) Prohibited Product Architecture in the Crypto-Asset Market
The legal framework introduced in Türkiye for crypto asset service providers (CASPs; KVHS under Turkish terminology) goes beyond the regulation of establishment and operational requirements. It also draws the boundaries of the product architecture that may be accepted in the market and clarifies which transaction models are excluded from the regulated system. In this respect, Articles 14 to 16 of Communiqué III-35/B.2 should be read not merely as technical compliance provisions, but as core rules reflecting the regulator’s strategic preference as to the design of the market structure.
Leveraged transactions, derivative contracts, credit-based purchases and sales, short selling and lending transactions, as well as practices which, by their nature, amount to portfolio management, fall within this normative framework. This regulatory stance provides a decisive frame of reference for the legal status and activity limits in Türkiye of product models that have become established on global platforms, including leveraged derivative instruments, margin-driven position structures and user-to-user position sharing models such as copy-trading.
2) Leveraged Transactions and Derivative Products
Article 14 of the Communiqué legally prevents crypto assets listed on platforms from being subject to leveraged transactions or derivative contracts. At the same time, it excludes credit-based purchases, short selling and lending transactions from the permitted scope of activity. This rule does not simply restrict certain transaction types; it redefines the operational perimeter of platforms to be authorised in Türkiye and, in practical terms, confines market activity to spot transactions.
In the global crypto-asset ecosystem, a significant share of trading volume is generated through leveraged and derivative positions. These instruments allow investors to manage margin-based positions, implement directional trading strategies and seek two-way exposure to market volatility. Against this background, the market impact of the framework introduced by Article 14 goes beyond a standard investor-protection measure. The restrictions structurally transform the market’s liquidity depth supported by leveraged order flow and its price discovery mechanism.
3) Pre-Structured Position Models
Certain product models encountered in market practice are not based on the transmission of individual orders, but on the presentation to users of positions structured through pre-determined parameter sets and the dissemination of those structures. In such instruments, critical components such as the transaction type, position direction, leverage ratio and margin size are determined in advance; the investor then assumes the proposed structure as a whole.
Although such a model may be presented, at a technical level, as a platform feature or a user-experience tool, its economic substance is the offering to the market of standardised risk profiles. At that point, the user does not conduct an independent assessment process, but is deemed to have assumed a packaged risk position directly. Where such structures contain leveraged transaction or derivative product elements, they fall directly within the scope of prohibited transactions under Article 14. In this respect, Article 14 does not merely prohibit leveraged transactions and derivative products; it also blocks the indirect offering of those elements to investors under different platform features or product designs.
4) Direction of Investment Decisions
Article 15 of the Communiqué preserves investment advisory activity at a normative level; however, by linking the service to a high asset threshold, it effectively reduces it to a service area limited to the high-net-worth segment. For the broad retail investor base falling below the minimum threshold of TRY 50 million, professional guidance mechanisms have become practically non-functional under this arrangement. The regulator’s choice establishes a strict, interventionist and prescriptive market discipline that leaves full responsibility for the investment decision to the investor’s own risk judgment and independent analysis.
Pre-structured position sharing or transaction models designed by third parties are directly incompatible with this principle of independent will. In these models, the investment intention is not formed at the level of the user; rather, the investor establishes a position by assuming a ready-made risk template presented by the platform. This picture may cause risk to be distributed through standardised structures rather than individual judgment, and has the potential to create uncontrolled risk concentration and position clustering in the market.
The portfolio management prohibition introduced under Article 15/3, which contains no exception, provides a strict normative set preventing investment decisions from being determined by a third party. When the spirit of the provision and market realities are assessed together, it is highly likely that this prohibition will not remain confined to classical portfolio management, but will be interpreted broadly to cover any structure in which the investment decision is effectively externalised, including algorithmic trading and copy-trading. At this point, structures shaped through social interaction or pre-determined transaction parameters carry a serious enforcement risk of being characterised by the regulator as “indirect portfolio management”.
The distinction drawn between Article 15/4 and Article 50 constitutes one of the principal compliance risk areas for platforms. The requirement that general recommendations must not be personalised and must comply with strict transparency obligations forces platforms to conduct research activities within a methodological discipline. By contrast, the more flexible regime applicable to non-directional financial information creates grey areas in practice. Given the high volatility and speculative nature of crypto-asset markets, the line between “pure information” and “implicit guidance” is inevitably blurred. This, in turn, requires platforms to establish recordkeeping and reporting infrastructures that provide a higher level of transparency, traceability and auditability against potential allegations of misleading guidance in supervisory processes.
5) Platform Responsibility for Products and Listing
Article 16 of the Communiqué moves the functional definition of platforms beyond that of a mere technical trading infrastructure provider. The provision imposes on platforms a comprehensive “legal and technical due diligence” obligation in respect of crypto assets to be subject to initial sale or distribution. In this context, the assessment of the code integrity of smart contracts, the analysis of the ownership or entitlement structure of the asset and the confirmation of regulatory compliance are included directly within the platform’s legal responsibility and compliance-control perimeter.
This provision confirms that platforms are no longer passive listing interfaces, but have become an active review threshold that determines the admission criteria for assets to be included in the system and approves the risk architecture specific to those assets. The focus of the regulation is not limited to the nature of the asset itself; it covers the entire end-to-end transaction cycle, from smart-contract security to custody protocols.
Pursuant to Articles 16/1 and 16/5, platforms are required to control the minimum elements of the smart contracts relating to the assets for which they act as intermediaries and to review their accuracy. This makes it necessary for CASPs to establish strong technical compliance units within their organisations or to activate external audit mechanisms. Whether the distributed ledger technology (DLT) has been developed by the platform itself or by the project owner does not alter the nature of this responsibility.
In particular, Articles 16/3 and 16/4 impose a cross-regulatory review responsibility on platforms for crypto assets qualifying as capital market instruments or for “tokenised” assets falling within the remit of other authorities such as the BRSA or the CBRT. This gives rise to a heavy professional duty of care requiring the platform, in addition to its own regulatory framework, to have command of all regulations applicable to the asset for which it acts as intermediary, including securitisation rules where relevant. Ultimately, the requirement that a custody infrastructure can be established for an asset under Article 16/7 confirms that the platform’s operational capability will operate as a primary filter in the listing decision.
6) Market Impact
When Articles 14, 15 and 16 of the Communiqué are analysed holistically, the regulator appears to adopt a firm position in bringing market dynamics under control. The exclusion of leveraged and derivative-based transaction models from the system aims to restrain position concentration and the speculative flow that triggers volatility in the market. While the individualisation of investment decisions weakens the dominant effect of social guidance mechanisms on the market, the supervisory powers imposed on platforms establish a central control hierarchy over system entry and risk distribution.
This regulatory choice rests on a rational basis in terms of investor protection and market integrity. Its side effects on market dynamics, however, should not be overlooked. These restrictions have the potential to create a directly constraining effect on liquidity depth, trading volume and the diversity of professional investment strategies.
Conclusion
Articles 14 to 16 of Communiqué III-35/B.2 do not merely determine operational activity requirements in the Turkish crypto-asset ecosystem; they create an area of regulatory intervention that directly shapes the product architecture of the market. Models based on leveraged transactions, derivative contracts and pre-structured position arrangements have, under this regulatory perspective, been placed outside the sphere of legal protection and systematically pushed out of the market.
In this framework, the strategic vision of the regulation presents a clear picture: the crypto-asset market in Türkiye is being redesigned not on the basis of unlimited product diversity, but on the basis of a narrowed transaction structure, supervised risk distribution and limited liquidity generation. Ultimately, while this approach places investor protection at its centre, it also requires a disciplinary transformation within platforms.
