Season 3 Finale - Hello Summer
This week, I'm wrapping up Season 3 with the last article before taking a short break from the "Cesur Yeni Dünya" newsletter until Season 4.
This week, I’m wrapping up Season 3 with the last article before taking a short break from the “Cesur Yeni Dünya” newsletter until Season 4.
It’s been a long season, this is the 54th newsletter and the 20th article of the 3rd season 🤓
Honestly, there’s so much happening in the Web3 and AI worlds that I could write about.
More than 140 major companies, including Circle’s biggest clients like Visa, Mastercard, BlackRock, and Coinbase, have come together to form a brand new stablecoin consortium. They’ve launched their own stablecoin. We’ll see over time how this affects Circle, the blockchain, and the traditional finance world.
Meanwhile, Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire was in Turkey for the launch of their new blockchain infrastructure, ARC. He talked about the infrastructure they’ve set up to make developing financial products on the blockchain easier, and of course, the conversation also touched on crypto adoption in Turkey and the digital Turkish lira.
On another front, one of the biggest IPOs in history took place, SpaceX.
The deadline for compliance with the EU’s crypto regulation, MiCA, has passed, and many crypto exchanges, including the giant Binance, couldn’t manage to stay in the EU market. Among the firms that couldn’t or didn’t get a license, 83% of the industry is in this situation 🙂 But whether this is about the exchanges and firms or how tough MiCA’s conditions are, I won’t comment on that 😶
Meanwhile, in Turkey, the next phase of regulation for crypto exchanges and custodians has begun. The number of exchanges that can keep their licenses is slowly decreasing with each phase. There are 56 exchanges on the temporary list, including those applying for a custody license, and 9 have applied for a custody license.
The news doesn’t stop, the tech world is still like a rollercoaster, and every day brings something new.
In June, I thought we’d slow down a bit with events like the Future AI Summit until fall, but the first week of July felt like a kind of Istanbul Arc Week. From the Arc launch to community meetups, it was all very enjoyable.
But as I close the season this week, I want to briefly talk about some events I’ve attended in the last few weeks that were both fun and informative, and the venue that hosted them.
In the last two weeks, I’ve attended three different events at DotsHub: “Bosphorus Leaders’ Roundtable” with Emirhan Kaysi, “AI Meetup” with Ugur Cinar from OpenAI, and finally, a “Fireside Chat” with Ipek Celiksoz and Umut Günbak.
I enjoyed each event in its own way; Emirhan Kaysi shared the journey of founding easyApp and reaching $1M ARR just when he thought everything was over; Ugur Cinar talked about his experiences at OpenAI and other tech firms in different countries and how he’s benefiting from them today; and Ipek and Umut discussed the process and key points for startups in or considering investment rounds in San Francisco, from both the VC and startup perspectives.
Each was wonderful and enjoyable, but I must say the warm and welcoming atmosphere of DotsHub and the hospitality of Ozan Kocak and Berat Kjamili played a big part.
To me, these events were genuine conversations where every entrepreneur, aspiring entrepreneur, curious individual, and especially those working on AI ideas/products could find something for themselves.
Even though Berat Kjamili jokingly asked if the previous events were bad when I told him how great these were 😁
If you’re in the entrepreneurship or startup world, and especially interested in AI technologies, I suggest following DotsHub on lu.ma or social media; even if things slow down a bit in summer, I think these kinds of open events will continue 🙂
Besides that, before I say see you next season, I want to say to those who follow the newsletter, read it occasionally, or are interested in these topics: write to me. If we don’t talk, discuss, write, and draw about the topics you want to be discussed, learn more about, or are curious about, how can we keep up with this brave new world moving at an unbelievable speed? Right?
See you next season.