Our Managing Partner Erdem Mümtaz Hacıpaşaoğlu joined the Hacettepe Law Society for a briefing event on blockchain and cryptocurrencies, dedicated to law students preparing to engage with on-chain assets as a real working layer of their future practice — not as a curiosity.
The central thesis of the talk was clear: blockchain is not a parallel internet that the law will eventually decide whether to “permit” — it is already operating, already moving value across borders, and already creating cases that courts and regulators in many jurisdictions, including Turkey, are being asked to decide.
From cryptography to cases
Mümtaz walked through the layered structure that turns a cryptographic primitive into a legal question: private keys and custody, exchanges and intermediaries, tokens and their classification, smart contracts as enforcement automatons, and the regulatory perimeter around money laundering, taxation and consumer protection. The point was to give students a working mental model rather than a regulatory recitation.
Why this matters for law students
The session closed on a practical point: students entering the profession over the next five years will not get to opt out of digital assets in their practice. Whether they end up in corporate, criminal, tax or litigation work, on-chain facts will start appearing in their files — and the lawyer who has built the underlying mental model has a multi-year head start.
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