Turkish Crypto-Exchange Licensing (KVHS Regime)

KVHS, Kripto Varlık Hizmet Sağlayıcısı, Crypto-Asset Service Provider, is Türkiye's licensing category for crypto exchanges, custodians, and related service providers, introduced for the first time by law in 2024. Before this regime existed, Turkish crypto exchanges operated with no dedicated licensing framework at all: a striking gap for a country that has consistently ranked among the world's highest by crypto-adoption surveys. The KVHS regime closes that gap, in the same spirit as (though legally separate from) the EU's MiCA CASP-licensing category and FATF's global VASP definition, see both entries: three different jurisdictions independently deciding that a crypto exchange should be regulated the way a brokerage or money-services business is, not left unlicensed.

What it actually requires

Two regulators, two different jobs, working together:

• SPK (the Capital Markets Board) licenses the business itself, establishment, minimum capital adequacy, and ongoing activity rules, through communiqués III-35/B.1 and III-35/B.2, in force since 13 March 2025.
• MASAK (see that entry) layers anti-money-laundering and remote-identification requirements on top, through Tebliğ No. 28 and No. 29 (June 2025): a KVHS must verify a new customer's name, birthdate, and TCKN against the national population registry, conduct a real-time recorded video call for accounts opened after 13 March 2025, and apply enhanced due diligence above certain thresholds.

Penalties are real, not theoretical: a customer-due-diligence violation carries a 453,342 TL MASAK fine (2025 figures); a first enhanced-measures violation carries 3,777,903 TL, rising to 7,555,806 TL on a second violation; and operating a KVHS without SPK authorization can carry criminal penalties of three to five years' imprisonment under Capital Markets Law Article 99/A.

Who actually built this

The Turkish Grand National Assembly passed Law No. 7518 in mid-2024, amending the existing Capital Markets Law to create the KVHS category. SPK and MASAK, two separate government bodies, then wrote the specific communiqués implementing it through 2025. This is Turkish financial law, drafted and enforced entirely by Turkish institutions, no private company, Solidus included, has any hand in it.

Solidus today

Solidus is not a KVHS, holds no SPK license, and does not operate a crypto exchange, custody service, or trading platform of any kind: there is nothing for Solidus itself to license here. Notably, as of this writing, no Turkish crypto-asset service provider holds a final KVHS license: the entire named population (roughly 56 platforms) operates under SPK's transitional provisions, and SPK has postponed final licensing indefinitely. Solidus Verify issues reusable identity credentials; a licensed (or transitional-status) KVHS could choose to accept one as an input into its own onboarding and MASAK compliance process, but that would be the KVHS's decision and the KVHS's regulatory obligation, not a status Solidus itself holds, and no Solidus product is described as KVHS-licensed or MASAK-compliant.

See also

MASAK is the AML/remote-identification regulator inside this regime. VASP and MiCA are the global and EU-specific versions of the same underlying licensing idea. FATF Travel Rule is the cross-border information-sharing obligation a fully licensed KVHS would eventually need to satisfy on qualifying transfers. KYC and AML are the general processes this Turkey-specific regime requires a KVHS to run.