Pakistan is home to roughly 40 million crypto users — the third-largest base in the world — and its regulators are now navigating a collision course between digital finance ambition and Islamic legal authority. At the heart of this tension sits a fatwa issued on June 10 that declared digital asset payments, including stablecoins like USDT, impermissible under Islamic law. For a country building one of the more ambitious crypto regulatory frameworks in the developing world, that ruling is not a minor footnote.

Key takeaways

• A fatwa issued on June 10 declared digital asset payments, including USDT and other stablecoins, impermissible under Islamic law in Pakistan.
• The fatwa classifies digital assets as failing to qualify as…