Bilal Bin Saqib, Chairman of the Pakistan Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority, spoke to TRT World about Pakistan’s expanding role in what he described as the next generation of finance, pointing to digital assets, tokenisation, and forward-looking regulation as the tools opening new pathways to global capital for the country. Saqib framed the discussion around how Pakistan’s regulatory approach to virtual assets is being used to attract international interest and deepen collaboration with Turkiye specifically.
Saqib has used a series of international platforms over recent months to make a similar case, positioning Pakistan’s rapid build-out of virtual asset regulation, including the establishment of PVARA itself and the Pakistan Crypto Council, as a deliberate strategy to move from restricting digital assets to becoming a formal, rules-based market for them. He has repeatedly tied this regulatory push to broader goals around financial inclusion, pointing to the large number of people globally who remain outside the formal financial system and the high cost of cross-border remittances as problems that tokenisation and digital asset infrastructure could help address.
The reference to deeper collaboration with Turkiye fits into a pattern of PVARA and Saqib engaging with a range of countries and international bodies on digital finance cooperation, including past appearances addressing forums in Central Asia and at the United Nations on similar themes of regulatory cooperation and technology-driven financial inclusion. Framing Pakistan’s virtual asset framework as a bridge to specific partner countries suggests the regulator is looking beyond domestic licensing and market development toward using its regulatory credibility to support bilateral engagement on digital finance and capital flows.
No specific agreements, timelines, or details of the collaboration with Turkiye were disclosed in the remarks shared through TRT World, and PVARA has not indicated what concrete steps might follow from this particular engagement. The comments add to a broader pattern of the regulator using international platforms to position Pakistan as an early mover in virtual asset regulation among emerging markets, though the practical scope of cooperation with Turkiye remains to be defined.
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