Key points
- Virtual Assets Ordinance 2025 creates Pakistan’s first crypto regulator to ensure global compliance and transparency
- Pakistan embraces Bitcoin for economic sovereignty
- Bilal Bin Saqib drives bold crypto policy reforms
- Strategic alliance with WLFi redefines global ties
- Nuclear-powered Bitcoin mining boosts energy use
- Blockchain unlocks transparency and financial access
In a world where economic sovereignty is often dictated by dependency on institutions, debt cycles, and conditional aid, Pakistan has dared to draft a new playbook—one that does not just reform systems but reinvents them. The year 2025 will likely be remembered as the pivot point when a nation long seen through the lens of crisis and volatility made a bold bid to transform itself into a digital-first economy, driven not by reactionary policy but visionary resolve.
At the centre of this transformation is a monumental legal step: the president’s approval of the Virtual Assets Ordinance, 2025, which establishes an independent regulator for cryptocurrencies and digital assets. This new authority has been granted sweeping powers to ensure transparency, compliance, and financial integrity, in full alignment with international standards, including those of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF). Its governance will include key government stakeholders, along with two independent directors specialising in virtual assets, law, finance, or technology. The chairperson will be selected based on demonstrated expertise in finance, regulatory affairs, or innovation—reflecting a meritocratic shift in digital policy oversight. With this forward-looking legislation, Pakistan takes a major leap towards building a secure, inclusive, and innovation-driven digital financial ecosystem.
From inertia towards innovation
The appointment of Bilal Bin Saqib—a young, entrepreneurial mind with global insight and grassroots credibility—as Special Assistant to the Prime Minister on Blockchain and Cryptocurrency set the stage for this metamorphosis. His elevation to federal ministerial rank, coupled with his leadership of the Pakistan Crypto Council (PCC), was not merely symbolic. It represented a break from tradition—a shift away from inertia towards innovation, from aid politics towards algorithmic governance, from bureaucratic delay to blockchain immediacy.
At the heart of this transformation lies an audacious concept: the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve. Launched at the global Bitcoin Conference in Las Vegas in May 2025, the reserve is Pakistan’s most striking declaration yet that it is prepared to challenge conventional economic dogma. For a country still navigating a convoluted maze of crypto bans, legal grey zones, and structural debt, this initiative is not just disruptive—it’s defiant. It signals that Pakistan is no longer content to wait at the doors of Bretton Woods institutions or rely on IMF tranches to dictate its growth tempo. Instead, it is choosing to accumulate digital value—mined from its own infrastructure, fuelled by its own energy, and protected by a decentralised global ledger immune to political bias.
Co-architect of new economic ecosystems
This pivot, however, is not unfolding in isolation. It is embedded within a larger geopolitical recalibration, marked most notably by Pakistan’s agreement with World Liberty Financial (WLFi), a US-based digital finance firm whose majority ownership includes Eric Trump, Donald Trump Jr, and Jared Kushner. For critics, the partnership may raise eyebrows. But for realists, it underscores a strategic gamble—linking Pakistan to a post-ideological, tech-centric alliance that prioritises utility over legacy diplomacy. WLFi’s interest in Pakistan is not incidental; it reflects a recognition of the country’s deep crypto market penetration, where 40 million users and an annual transaction volume nearing $300 billion offer fertile ground for scalable innovation. By choosing collaboration over confrontation, Pakistan is shifting from client-state status to co-architect of new economic ecosystems.
Ecological and economic transition
Yet what makes this digital turn truly revolutionary is its dual function: solving immediate infrastructural challenges while crafting long-term digital resilience. One of the most ambitious proposals in this regard is the use of 2,000 MW of nuclear-generated surplus energy for Bitcoin mining. In a country where power surplus frequently destabilises the national grid and burdens Independent Power Producers (IPPs) with idle capacity, this solution is elegant in its simplicity and powerful in its implications. Bitcoin mining provides a non-tariff-based, capital-free sink for energy consumption. It turns excess into asset, instability into income. With projections indicating a solar capacity growth from 4,000 MW to 14,000 MW in three years, this energy-crypto nexus can become the linchpin of Pakistan’s dual transition—both ecological and economic.
But energy efficiency is just one dimension. The underlying philosophy of this crypto revolution is economic autonomy. Mined Bitcoin is more than a digital token—it is programmable value, a potential sovereign collateral. It can serve as a cushion against foreign exchange volatility, a hedge against inflation, or even a reserve instrument for bilateral trade. In a country routinely caught in debt diplomacy and currency crunches, these digital assets offer a third way—a method of participation in global financial circuits without being tethered to their coercive mechanics. It repositions Pakistan from the periphery of financial dependency to the frontier of decentralised leverage.
Digital wallets linked to biometric data
Crucially, this is not only about state-level macroeconomics. At the grassroots, Pakistan’s crypto evolution is engineered to address its most stubborn problem: financial exclusion. Despite aggressive fintech growth, tens of millions of Pakistanis remain unbanked. Traditional banking systems have failed to reach remote, low-income, or undocumented populations. Blockchain, by virtue of its borderless, trustless, and identity-verifiable framework, offers a different logic of inclusion. The PCC’s roadmap envisions digital wallets linked to biometric data, allowing rural citizens to access credit, remittances, and social welfare through decentralised applications. This does not just reduce corruption—it builds dignity.
The same logic applies to governance. By integrating blockchain into public institutions—from land records to procurement, from identity verification to vote management—Pakistan is attempting to purge inefficiency and opacity from its administrative DNA. The vision is not utopian; it is infrastructural. If executed well, it can reduce red tape, prevent embezzlement, and restore public trust in a state that has long suffered from institutional fatigue. In a region riddled with outdated governance models and centralised abuse, Pakistan’s experiment may well become a benchmark for the Global South.
A tightrope walk
Naturally, such a tectonic shift does not come without friction. Regulatory uncertainty, technological illiteracy, and institutional resistance pose immediate challenges. The crypto ecosystem, even in mature economies, remains volatile, with high risks of exploitation. Pakistan’s FATF commitments also require a tightrope walk—ensuring digital freedom without enabling illicit finance. But here again, the leadership style of Bilal Bin Saqib offers reassurance. His approach is start-up-like: iterative, agile, and risk-tolerant. He understands that experimentation, not perfection, is the currency of innovation.
From a historical vantage point, Pakistan’s current trajectory echoes moments of radical reimagination. The country was born not from consensus, but from a leap of ideological faith. Its nuclear policy in the 1990s, though condemned, secured strategic parity. Its engagement with China on CPEC altered regional economics. Today, crypto is its next strategic bet. And unlike past gambits rooted in geopolitics, this one is rooted in code—in mathematics, in protocols, in open-source collaboration. It’s a bet on talent, not terrain; on software, not subsidies.
A statement of identity
More than anything else, Pakistan’s crypto doctrine in 2025 is a statement of identity. It proclaims that sovereignty in the 21st century cannot be anchored in borders alone—it must be built on data, infrastructure, and digital capital. Countries that adapt will shape the future. Those that resist will be shaped by it. By embracing blockchain, Bitcoin reserves, and strategic partnerships, Pakistan is trying to outrun its past—not by denying it, but by transcending it.
The world is watching—some with scepticism, others with quiet admiration. Pakistan may not have Silicon Valley, but it has the ambition of one. It may not yet possess institutional agility, but it is learning to code its way around bureaucratic decay. In a geopolitical age where power is being redistributed from empires to networks, Pakistan has chosen to be a node of innovation rather than a victim of inertia. Whether this experiment succeeds or not, it has already done one thing: it has changed the conversation. From IMF bailouts to Bitcoin reserves, from corruption scandals to blockchain governance, Pakistan’s narrative is being rewritten—line by decentralised line.
