Bitcoin as cryptocurrency and Criminal Law

In this study, it is aimed to determine the legal status of cryptocurrencies, which have been emerged as one of greatest recent innovations of information technologies (IT), especially in criminal law context, and to reveal their relations with present legal structures and regulations in context of the certain crimes regulated in Turkish Criminal Code. Although it is not more than a decade from the existing of the first cryptocurrency Bitcoin, people started to use them as payment instruments for purchasing real and virtual goods and services in daily life and in commercial contexts. International big companies started to accept them, and there are hundreds of exchange centers special for trading them. They have bi-directional convertibility with national currencies and, their marketplace volumes have been growing very rapidly. All of these findings show that they have a great potential and importance. In order to evaluate cryptocurrencies in context of criminal law, it is a necessity to perform a multi-disciplinary study between information science and jurisprudence. A jurist should have a good understanding of IT concepts and technological components underlying cryptocurrencies, for determining a proper place for them and specifying their relations with the existing institutions and regulations in legal area. In the study, these considerations have been taken into account and the required technical explanations are included.