The Virtual Assets Alliance of Pakistan says it will protect crypto users, but it has no legal powers and no government backing. Its second-in-command runs HTX's business in Pakistan, and the adoption ranking quoted at its launch is a year out of date.
The finance minister told bankers on Monday that the government is looking at putting some of Pakistan's existing Eurobond debt on a blockchain, and wants cabinet approval before it asks for proposals. Banks, meanwhile, are still barred from holding crypto. Here is what was said, and what was not.
Korea already makes exchanges keep at least 80% of customers' crypto offline, and on Monday its regulator asked them to keep more. Pakistan's custody rules ask only for "the majority", with no figure, and no exchange is licensed under them yet.
While Binance's withdrawals were frozen after its $6.3 billion hack, the extra Pakistanis pay for USDT over the official dollar rate fell to 1.41%, the lowest in three months of our daily data. It recovered as withdrawals began to reopen on Sunday. Here is what the numbers show, and what they don't.
The global money-laundering watchdog has launched a targeted review of how countries with significant crypto markets apply its rules, with results due in June and October 2027. It has not said which countries it will look at. Pakistan is among the jurisdictions the FATF counts as having "materially
Eighteen years ago today, an unknown programmer emailed a nine-page paper that became Bitcoin. Here is what it actually says, where to read it in Urdu, and how the idea looks from Pakistan this week.
FTX filed for bankruptcy on 11 November 2022. Four years on, Sam Bankman-Fried is asking the US Supreme Court to hear his case, and the government's answer is due on 16 November. Pakistan has its own link to the collapse. Its creditors were on a list of countries whose payouts FTX's estate once prop
Pakistan's new crypto regulations set out what a licensed exchange may do with a wallet nobody has touched. After a year it can be marked dormant and withdrawals blocked until you reactivate it. After ten years the coins are meant to go to a state-linked custodian, but not until rules protecting the
Binance says attackers took about $6.3 billion from its wallets and that it will cover every dollar. Withdrawals were paused and have since begun reopening in phases. Here is what we know, what Pakistan's rules would demand of a licensed exchange, and what to do if your money is on Binance.
The committee that runs Pakistan's anti-money-laundering policy has approved adding the crypto regulator to the list of AML supervisors in the Anti-Money Laundering Act. Once the government notifies it, PVARA gets the Act's powers to inspect, demand records and fine crypto firms over money-launderin
The State Bank rewrote its rules for freelancers' dollar accounts in April, promising one-day processing and letting them keep at least $5,000 a month in dollars. Some freelancers take USDT instead, which has traded about 3% above the official rate, before fees. Here is what each route gives you, an
The IMF's latest financial stability report devotes a chapter to tokenisation and names four things that hold it back. Pakistan, which wants to tokenise state assets, has started on two. Its own law leaves open who would regulate a tokenised bond.
Jack Dorsey's Block has shown Dessa, an AI model trained only on recorded speech that listens and talks at the same time and runs on a laptop. It is not public yet. Here is what Block says it does, what is still unknown, and why it matters for how we will use AI.
Dubai's regulator has given Bybit a full licence, but only for spot exchange services, not the derivatives the platform is known for. In Pakistan, where Bybit is one of the two P2P venues behind our live rupee price, no crypto platform is licensed yet.
Google now accepts Dubai's crypto licence for exchange ads aimed at the UAE. Neither Google's nor Meta's crypto ad rules list Pakistan or PVARA, which has licensed no one. Here is what that means for the crypto promotions in your feed.
