On 10 October 2025, more than $19 billion of leveraged crypto bets were force-closed in a day, about Rs5.4 trillion. Pakistan now has written rules for exactly that business. No firm is licensed to run it yet.
Bitcoin hit its record on 6 October 2025. A year on, it is 32% lower in dollars and 33% lower in rupees, because the rupee firmed in between. For Pakistanis who buy through USDT on P2P, the price is higher still.
Pakistan's crypto licensing rules are not a draft. They took effect on 21 August and set a minimum capital for each kind of licence, from Rs15 million for advice to Rs500 million to run an exchange.
OKX's new app turns local money into dollar stablecoins and offers up to 10% a year. Its launch release names Pakistan among its first markets. OKX holds no Pakistani licence, and PVARA's rules on marketing, payments and yield are specific.
Pakistan's banks will give away Rs16 billion a year in prizes to families who receive money from abroad through a bank. The first qualifying quarter began on 1 October. On the latest inflow figures, the average entry is worth at least Rs37 per $100.
In its latest yearly check on how countries regulate crypto firms, published in July, the global money-laundering watchdog lists 68 jurisdictions. Of 57 jurisdictions with a licensing law, Pakistan was the only one to report neither an inspection of a crypto firm nor any enforcement action.
Saturday's Asian Games final was a tradeable contract on crypto prediction markets, and one of them does not block Pakistan. Our gambling law, the betting-app crackdown and PVARA's rules all bear on whether a Pakistani should take part. None gives a clear yes.
Since early September we have recorded the price of USDT on Binance P2P and Bybit P2P every 15 minutes. Two patterns held up across the month: before dawn is the dearest and patchiest time to trade, and weekends have come in cheaper. Neither pattern is large, and the gap between ads can matter more.
A Pakistani website says the State Bank has started piloting a wholesale digital rupee with five big banks. It cites no document, and we could find no announcement. Here is what the State Bank has actually said.
You don't need a licence to mine Bitcoin for yourself in Pakistan. You do need one to mine for anyone else. Sixteen months after the government promised 2,000MW to miners, here is what the rules say, what was promised and what has actually happened.
When the State Bank ended its remittance subsidy in July, we said we would watch whether money sent home slowed. It didn't: $7.29 billion arrived in July and August, up 14.7%. Yet our daily measure of USDT on peer-to-peer markets has never fallen to the official rate.
Bitget says its customers lost nothing in last week's $388 million theft, and its P2P market, which lists rupee trades through Easypaisa and JazzCash, reopens on Friday afternoon. Here is what Pakistan's new rulebook would require of an exchange in the same position, and what you can and cannot chec
The price Pakistanis pay for USDT on peer-to-peer markets hit its highest level in our daily series on 28 September, while the official dollar rate barely moved. It has eased since. We don't know what caused it.
Binance is not banned in Pakistan, and it holds a no-objection certificate from PVARA. That is not a licence. As of 30 September 2026, no crypto exchange in Pakistan has one.
Pakistan's finance minister and its crypto regulator spent UN week pitching a regulated digital-asset future. The regulator then gave Harvard a test for it: "The public experience is the test." We apply it.
