Pakistan’s policymakers and technology experts convened in Lahore for the Leadership Summit on Blockchain and Digital Assets, hosted by the LUMS Centre for Digital Assets Research, where officials made clear that the government’s engagement with virtual assets has moved decisively from deliberation to execution. The summit brought together senior figures from government, academia, and the private sector to address the scale and urgency of Pakistan’s digital asset landscape, which now encompasses an estimated 40 million users, the vast majority of whom currently operate through informal platforms that carry significant consumer risk and offer no regulatory recourse.
Minister of State Bilal Bin Saqib, who also serves as Chairman of Pakistan Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority, addressed the summit and stressed the need for timely policy intervention, noting that the government must act decisively and that execution rather than analysis is now the priority. He outlined the economic context driving the urgency, pointing to Pakistan’s approximately 38 billion US dollars in annual remittance inflows, which blockchain-based settlement systems could make significantly more efficient by reducing transaction costs, eliminating intermediaries, and increasing the speed of cross-border value transfer. The freelance economy, which posted a 50.9 percent growth rate in the 2025-26 fiscal year and now includes over 2.37 million active professionals, was also cited as a sector that requires regulatory clarity to remain competitive and attract international clients and payment platforms.
On the framework being developed, the Minister outlined a risk-mitigated approach centred on regulatory sandboxes, controlled environments in which emerging digital finance technologies can be tested under supervised conditions before receiving full licensing and broader market access. The initial focus within the sandbox framework will be on asset-backed tokenization, a model that allows real estate and financial instruments to be divided into smaller digital units accessible to a wider base of investors, including those with limited capital. This approach is designed to open investment pathways that have historically been available only to wealthy individuals or institutions, using digital infrastructure to democratize access to asset classes that have long served as stores of value in Pakistan.
The summit also surfaced a significant structural challenge: talent. Minister Bin Saqib identified the shortage of professionals with expertise in blockchain, digital finance, and regulatory technology as the single biggest gap in Pakistan’s virtual assets ecosystem at present, urging banks, technology firms, and academic institutions to collaborate on building the human capital pipeline the sector will require to function at scale. The emphasis on talent development, coming alongside the regulatory sandbox and formal framework being developed by Pakistan Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority, points to a recognition that regulation alone is insufficient without the skilled workforce to operate within, comply with, and grow the regulated ecosystem over time.
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