Pakistan didn’t just wake up one morning and decide that it loves crypto, said the chairman of the country’s Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority (PVARA).

The country was in the unusual position of having one of the largest crypto markets on the planet, but no guardrails at all, PVARA chairman Bilal Bin Saqib told Consensus Hong Kong 2026 on Thursday.

“In 2025, Pakistan did realize that we have approximately 40 million of its citizens who are already trading digital assets with zero rules, zero protection, and zero benefit flowing back to the state,” Bin Saqib said via virtual link. “The market existed, but the regulations didn’t. So essentially, we tried to move from a gray market into a governed market.”

In fact, Pakistan boasts…