One year after celebrating the opening of its Türkiye office, Taurus hosted the Taurus Annual Conference Istanbul during Istanbul Blockchain Week, bringing together senior leaders from banking, financial institutions, regulation, and Türkiye’s digital asset industry.

The event focused on a central priority for financial institutions in Türkiye: developing regulated services with the custody controls and long-term security planning required for institutional use.

Institutional adoption and market priorities

Lamine Brahimi, Co-Founder and Managing Partner at Taurus, and Bashir Kazour, Managing Director for the region, opened the event with a keynote on institutional digital assets in Türkiye and globally.

They discussed the growth of regulated digital asset markets, client demand for digital asset services, and the infrastructure banks in Türkiye need before launch.

Türkiye’s regulatory framework

Taurus also had the privilege of welcoming TÜBİTAK representatives Mustafa Takoğlu, Burcu Gündoğan, and Fatih Birinci, who discussed Türkiye’s crypto asset regulations and infrastructure criteria.

Custody, cold storage, and post-quantum risk

Security was one of the main topics of the event. Türkiye’s infrastructure criteria place strong emphasis on custody controls, including cold wallet isolation, key management, approval workflows, and operational governance.

Taurus referred to Air-gapped Cold Storage Architectures, its recent paper on secure custody models for long-term digital asset holdings. The paper explains how physical and technical isolation, secure signing environments, segregation of duties, and operating procedures can support institutional custody in Türkiye.

The discussion also covered post-quantum readiness. Taurus has researched this area since 2021 and recently published Quantum Computing Risk in Digital Asset Custody: HSM vs. MPC to help institutions prepare for cryptographic change. Taurus’ infrastructure is post-quantum ready and can support the signature schemes selected by blockchain networks, including advanced hash-based approaches.

Taurus’ commitment to Türkiye

Lamine Brahimi said: “Türkiye is an important market for Taurus, and we were honoured to bring together such a strong group of institutions and experts in Istanbul. Taurus has worked with Turkish banks for several years, and that experience gives us strong confidence in the country’s institutional potential. Banks here approach digital assets with ambition and discipline, with a clear focus on regulation and security.”

“At Taurus, we remain committed to supporting banks and financial institutions in Türkiye with enterprise-grade digital asset infrastructure, while respecting all applicable regulatory and infrastructure requirements.”