Skip to content
Subscribe

Bitcoin mining in Pakistan: what's legal and what's real

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.

Ammar Khan

Ammar Khan

4 min read
Electricity transmission towers and power lines at sunset.
Photo by Matthew Henry on Unsplash

Key takeaways

  • Under PVARA's 2026 regulations, "pure" mining for yourself needs no licence. Mining that involves other people's money or assets needs one.
  • The licence category for mining services carries a minimum paid-up capital of Rs500 million.
  • The government announced 2,000MW of surplus power for mining and AI in May 2025. The IMF refused the cheaper tariff that would have made it pay.
  • As of 1 October 2026 we have found no official announcement that any mining operation under the allocation has started.

You don't need a PVARA licence to mine for your own account. The Pakistan Virtual Asset Services Regulations, 2026, notified by PVARA on 21 August 2026, say in regulation 4(6) that "pure Virtual Asset mining, by itself, shall not constitute a Virtual Asset Service requiring a Licence under the Act".

The same regulation draws the line. Mining operations "involving Customer Assets or Customer funds, or otherwise involving the provision of services to third parties on a professional basis" are treated as virtual asset services "and shall require licensing". The category is called Mining Related Virtual Asset Services, and Schedule I of the regulations sets its minimum paid-up capital at Rs500 million.

In practice that splits mining into two kinds:

What you do Licence needed?
Run your own machines and keep what they mine No
Host other people's machines, sell mining contracts, run a pool or "cloud mining" for customers Yes, under the mining services category

The regulation also lets PVARA set up a registration or declaration system for mining operators above set thresholds of "scale, energy use, or hash rate". We have not found one published on PVARA's regulations or news pages. If it appears, large operations mining only for themselves may have to register even though they need no licence.

PVARA's licensing page still describes full licensing as something that will come "when full licensing becomes available", and its /licensees address returned "not found" when we checked on 1 October 2026. So we know of no one licensed to sell Pakistanis a mining contract today. The licensing framework is explained in What PVARA is, and what it can and cannot regulate.

The 2,000MW promise

On 25 May 2025 the Ministry of Finance announced that Pakistan would allocate 2,000 megawatts of surplus electricity, in a first phase, to Bitcoin mining and AI data centres. The Pakistan Crypto Council led the initiative. The idea was to put idle generating capacity to paid use.

The plan lost its economics within weeks. Pakistan's Power Division had proposed a discounted tariff for energy-heavy industries including crypto mining. The IMF refused, reported Decrypt, saying such packages resembled "sector-specific tax holidays that have historically created imbalances". Pakistan's power secretary told a Senate committee the plan "remains under review by the World Bank and other development partners".

The difference matters. An allocation says power will be available. A tariff says it will be cheap. Pakistan delivered the first and was refused the second, and for a miner, electricity is the main cost. We covered this in detail in Pakistan offered miners 2,000MW; the IMF said no to cheap power.

Has any mining started?

Not that anyone has officially announced. In December 2025, Bilal Bin Saqib, who now chairs PVARA, was quoted by The Nation saying mining would begin "within the next few weeks", with equipment installed at power plants, as we reported on 30 September. PVARA's news page, checked on 1 October 2026, carries no mining announcement; its newest item is from December 2025. We found none in the finance ministry's press releases when we checked on 30 September.

The gap has filled with claims. On 29 September a widely shared post said Pakistan was putting Bitcoin miners on landfills "across the country". We found no source for it. Old stories about the 2,000MW plan also keep being republished as if they were new. When you see one, check the date of the original announcement.

What this means for Pakistani users

  • Mining your own machines is allowed, but the power isn't cheap. There is no discounted tariff for miners. Work out your costs at the rate on your own bill.
  • Treat any "cloud mining" or hosting offer with suspicion. Mining for customers needs a PVARA licence and Rs500 million in capital, and no one holds that licence yet. A platform taking your money to mine on your behalf is, at best, operating outside the framework.
  • "Government-backed mining" is not a product. The 2,000MW allocation is a policy, not an investment you can buy into. Anyone selling it as one is borrowing the government's name.
  • Be wary of hash-rate thresholds in mining guides. Figures such as a 100 PH/s minimum for domestic miners circulate widely. We have found no official source for them.

What we're watching

  • The first official confirmation that a mining operation is running under the 2,000MW allocation, and who operates it.
  • Any registration or declaration framework for large miners under regulation 4(6).
  • Whether a mining tariff comes back in a future IMF review.
  • The first Mining Related Virtual Asset Services licence. Our PVARA licence tracker will record it.

Sources

Share WhatsApp X LinkedIn