HONG KONG: Pakistan’s achievement in standing up a full virtual assets regulatory regime in under six months, using less than 8 percent of the approved budget, has drawn international attention after being revealed at Bitcoin Asia in Hong Kong, one of the sector’s foremost global forums.
The disclosure was made by the Minister of State and Chairman of the Pakistan Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority (PVARA), Mr. Bilal Bin Saqib, has since been picked up by international media as an example of a new, delivery-focused model of government.
Addressing the international forum, the Minister revealed that approximately 92 percent of the approved budget was returned to the exchequer.
“We used only 8 percent of our approved budget to get this done,” he stated. “Government should not measure success by how much money it spends. It should measure success by how much it delivers.”
In under six months, Pakistan progressed from primary legislation to notified regulations and a live licensing regime, establishing a formal pathway for companies operating in the digital asset sector.
The framework covers activities including exchanges, custody, brokerage, asset management, lending and settlement, and introduces requirements around governance, anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism financing, customer asset safeguarding, cybersecurity and market conduct.
The Minister presented the rollout as a model of technology-first, execution-led government, built on delivery rather than expenditure.
Rather than building a large bureaucracy, the effort relied on smaller teams and technology-driven workflows. “Technology is moving at machine speed,” he said.
“Government has to learn how to move much faster without compromising structure, accountability or consumer protection.” He added: “Speed without structure can be dangerous. But structure without speed can become irrelevant.”
The Minister said Pakistan’s ambitions extend beyond today’s digital asset market to an economy increasingly shaped by tokenised markets, programmable payments, stablecoins, machine-to-machine commerce and artificial intelligence agents.
“Today we are regulating virtual asset service providers,” he stated. “Tomorrow we will need regulation around agentic payments and the agentic economy.”
Internationally, this is increasingly being seen as a new model of technology-first, execution-led government, and a signal that Pakistan wants to help shape the future of finance, not merely adopt it.
The Minister said Pakistan is no longer only catching up with frontier technologies but is beginning to lead in how they are governed.
“Emerging markets do not have to spend the next decade catching up. We can build at the frontier,” he said. With a population of more than 240 million, Pakistan represents a significant market for emerging financial technologies.
