Pakistan’s cabinet has cleared the creation of the Pakistan Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority (PVARA), setting the stage for a formal licensing and supervisory regime for digital-asset businesses in a country that already ranks among the world’s busiest crypto markets.
A cabinet communiqué said PVARA will operate as an autonomous body responsible for authorising, monitoring and enforcing standards on virtual-asset service providers in line with Financial Action Task Force (FATF) recommendations.
The step follows months of policy work led by the Pakistan Crypto Council (PCC), an inter-agency forum launched on 14 March 2025 to craft rules for blockchain technologies, digital currencies and tokenised assets.
Finance Minister Muhammad Aurangzeb will chair PVARA’s board, while operational oversight will fall to Bilal Bin Saqib, the prime minister’s special assistant on blockchain and crypto.
The supervisory architecture mirrors the PCC, whose membership spans the Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan chair, the State Bank governor and senior law and information-technology officials.
That structure is designed to give the new authority a clear cross-government mandate and minimise regulatory overlap.
The PCC has also engaged global industry figures including former Binance chief executive Changpeng Zhao as advisers, underscoring Islamabad’s ambition to align local standards with international best practice and attract foreign capital.
The decision builds on a series of crypto-related announcements.
At the Bitcoin 2025 conference in Las Vegas on 28 May, Pakistan unveiled plans for a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve and pledged to divert 2,000 megawatts of surplus electricity to power Bitcoin-mining and artificial-intelligence data centres.
Officials framed the initiatives as tools to stabilise foreign-exchange buffers, monetise idle energy capacity and spur digital-economy jobs.
Once enabling legislation passes parliament, PVARA will issue licences, draft technical guidelines, enforce anti-money-laundering and cyber-security rules, and coordinate with the IMF and World Bank on supervisory benchmarks.
Industry analysts say a clear regulatory path could channel a sizeable share of the roughly $300 billion in estimated annual informal crypto trading into the formal economy and encourage international exchanges to set up regional hubs.
Pakistan’s market potential is underpinned by more than 40 million estimated crypto users, rapid mobile-internet adoption and a population that is over 70 percent under the age of 30.
