Pakistan Begins a Policy Reversal by Proposing a National Crypto Council

Pakistan’s Finance Minister Muhammad Aurangzeb chaired a high-level digital-assets meeting in Islamabad on February 25 and directed officials to develop a regulatory framework for the sector. The Finance Division said the government would consider establishing a National Crypto Council bringing together government, regulators, and industry experts.

The significance lay in the change of direction. Cryptocurrency had previously occupied an uncertain and often hostile policy position in Pakistan. Contemporary Pakistani reporting described the February discussions as a move toward bringing an industry that had been effectively treated as a no-go area into a regulated framework. Officials said the country had more than 20 million active users in the broader digital-asset market; that number should not be described as 20 million Bitcoin users.

The proposal was still preliminary. Pakistan did not formally launch the Pakistan Crypto Council until March. Yet the February meeting proved to be the opening public stage of a rapid policy shift that later produced increasingly explicit Bitcoin initiatives, including discussion of mining infrastructure and a national strategic Bitcoin reserve.

The event therefore captures the beginning of a major non-Western policy reversal rather than retroactively treating later Bitcoin announcements as though they had already happened in February.