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 the third largest crypto market by retail activity, ahead of places like Germany and Japan, Bin Saqib said. This is because Pakistan isn’t just an emerging economy, it’s also a young country in terms of demographics. Some 70% of the 250 million population are under the age of 30.

“We are one of the most tech savvy youth populations on the planet,” the PVARA chairman said. “We have over 100 million unbanked citizens, people who have no saving tools, no investment tools, no way to break out of their economic class. And hence why crypto and blockchain are not a luxury for Pakistan. It’s a ladder for the masses.”

Pakistan's bitcoin strategic reserve and national mining plans

One area of interest for the crypto industry was Bin Saqib’s announcement last year at Bitcoin Las Vegas that Pakistan was planning to establish a strategic bitcoin BTC $68,087.00 reserve and support bitcoin mining.

Bin Saqib pointed out it wasn't just “an announcement,” but added that “when you are dealing with something as strategic as the Bitcoin reserve or the national energy allocation, speed without structure can be dangerous.”

As for the reserve, “the first step is we've identified the digital assets that are held by the state, moving them into a formal state controlled custody framework, and that establishes transparency, accountability and the standards. It's not about speculation; it's about treating digital assets as sovereign wealth,” Bin Saqib said.

On the mining side, he said: “We've identified the sites where we have surplus electricity, and now we are assessing the economics and the impacts, and at the same time, we are also engaging with global miners and also AI compute operators.”

The project is about following a “responsible partnership model,” Bin Saqib said, because this is not just a stand alone crypto experiment.

“It's part of a broader strategy around energy optimization, compute capacity and our national digital infrastructure. Because Bitcoin mining and AI data centers are the two mechanisms for converting unused energy into productive capacity for our country.”