Islamabad:
The Federal Government and the Central Bank reiterated on Thursday that the use of cryptocurrencies was illegal and any person who dealt with these currencies was likely to be investigated by the Financial Monitoring Unit (FMU) and the Federal Research Agency (FIA).
The statements were made by the Federal Secretary of Finance Imdad Ullah Bosal and the executive director of the State Bank of the Bank of Pakistan (SBP) Sohail Jawad during a meeting of the National Finance Committee of the Assembly Assembly.
The development also occurred a day after the newly appointed special assistant of the Prime Minister in Crypto and Blockchain, Bin Saqib Billal, made a tone for the promotion of cryptocurrencies during his visit to the United States.
Crypto is not a legal currency in Pakistan, Bosal said. He recommended that the Committee invite the Crypto Council of Pakistan (PCC) to a new informative session. SAPM BILAL BIN SAQIB is also the executive director of the PCC.
“The work in cryptographic currencies is in a very, very preliminary stage and every time the government decides to take it further, we would recommend having a comprehensive legal and regulatory framework for it,” Bosal said, and added that until now there was no such framework.
Sitting in the Committee, the Popular Party of Pakistan (PPP) MNA Sharmila Faruqi raised the issue of contradictory policy statements by the Government regarding the promotion of cryptocurrencies in Pakistan.
“It seems that there is no legal framework for cryptocurrencies despite the fact that Pakistan has recently left the financial action task group [FATF] Gray list, “he said.
In response, Jawad expected the PCC to involve other interested parties to agree on a robust legal and regulatory framework.
While the Secretary of Finance was telling the Committee of the National Assembly that the use of cryptocurrencies was illegal in Pakistan, his ministry was promoting these new coins through a different set of ads, at least two of them leaving this week.
Jawad, the executive director of SBP, said that in 2018, the Central Bank had issued instructions to its regulated entities. “According to these instructions that are still valid, the trade and possession of cryptocurrencies is illegal, and these entities are obliged to inform such cases to the FMU for ongoing investigation by the FIA,” he said.
Early in the day, a statement from the Ministry of Finance cited Billal Bin Saqib saying that the Pakistan government has assigned 2,000 megawatts of surplus electricity in phase 1 for mining data centers and artificial intelligence (AI) of Bitcoin.
Bin Saqib also declared that this would open doors to sovereign miners, technology companies and clean energy partners worldwide. To take advantage of this impulse, SAQIB also leads the creation of the Digital Assets Authority of Pakistan (PDAA), he added.
PDAA would be a regulatory body designed to empower builders, protect investors and formalize digital finance frameworks for the future, according to the Ministry. However, the committee’s procedures revealed an abyss between Pakistan’s legal framework and the country’s ambitions to go to the promotion of digital currencies.
The executive director of SBP said there was only one country in the world that declared cryptography as a legal tender, but had also decided to withdraw the decision. He said there were different forms of digital currencies, including bitcoins, stable currencies, other non -fungible coins and all these classes would require a separate set of regulations.
Even if cryptocurrencies are prohibited as legal tenders, it is still being used to send money abroad, even to buy used cars from Japan, said MNA Usama Mela of the Pakistan Tehreek-E-Insaf (PTI). There is the impression that the government itself was going to extract coins using the 2000 megawatts of recently assigned electricity, he added.
The committee also asked about the legal support of the Council to which the Secretary of Finance said that until now, the Council was working under the executive orders of the Prime Minister, but the government planned to present a law to give it the legal coverage.
The way in which the government promotes cryptocurrencies in the media, people have begun to invest a lot in it that also caused an increase in prices, said Mirza Ikhtiar Baig of the PPP.
The Ministry of Finance said in its press release that Billal Bin Saqib spoke in front of an elite hearing that included the vice president of the United States, JD Vance, Eric Trump and Donald Trump JR, in the Bitcoin Vegas 2025. Delivering an opening speech, added the first Bitcoin map of the country, and with you, a new radical vision of The Keynote, the map of finance of the country.
“Pakistan is no longer defined by his past. He is being reborn as a digital innovation center with a vision of the future, driven by his youth, exacerbated by necessity and led by a new generation of technological statesmen,” Bilal said.
“I am not alone here as a minister,” he continued, “I am here as the voice of a generation, a generation that is online, in the chain and unstoppable.”
Bilal announced the establishment of a national Bitcoin wallet, which maintains digital assets already in state custody, not for sale or speculation, but as a sovereign reserve that indicates long -term belief in decentralized finances. He also thanked President Donald Trump for his role as Pacifier in the recent conflict in India-Pakistan and for his commitment to cryptographic adoption.
