Bilal Bin Saqib, Minister of State and chairman of Pakistan's Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority (PVARA), delivered the keynote at a briefing formally titled "Digital Assets and Blockchain for Sustainable Development: Advancing Digital Finance through Innovation." The session was co-organised by Pakistan's Permanent Mission to the UN, UNDP, UNCTAD, and the Office of the Secretary-General's Envoy on Technology (OSET), and was held at UN Headquarters in New York. It was framed around financial inclusion and sustainable development rather than market speculation. The audience included senior representatives from all three UN co-organising bodies: Robert Opp, UNDP Chief Digital Officer; Juan José Martinez Badillo, Chief of UNCTAD's New York Office; and Quintin Chou-Lambert, Deputy to the Secretary-General's Envoy on Technology. Ambassador Asim Iftikhar Ahmad, Pakistan's Permanent Representative to the UN, represented the host mission.

Saqib's central argument was direct: 1.4 billion adults worldwide still lack access to formal financial services, and the current cost of sending money across borders is more than twice the target set under UN Sustainable Development Goal 10.c. That goal calls for remittance costs below 3% by 2030. The actual global average sits around 6.09% per transaction, meaning a family receiving a $200 transfer loses more than $12 to fees. Saqib pointed to blockchain-based payment rails as a practical tool for closing that gap, and positioned clear regulation as the prerequisite for making those tools accessible at scale.

"The question before this room is not whether these technologies will scale. They will," Saqib told delegates. "The question is: who will shape them, and in whose interest?" The framing throughout was that regulatory work serves as infrastructure rather than constraint. Saqib told the briefing that "regulation should be treated as market-building rather than market-blocking," and put the underlying stakes in starker terms: "The choice before every Member State is not regulate or don't regulate. It is simpler, and starker, than that: to govern the future, or be governed by it."

Pakistan is not arguing from the sidelines. The country enacted its Virtual Assets Act in 2026, converting a temporary ordinance into permanent law and formally establishing PVARA as an autonomous federal licensing and supervisory authority. The legislation marked a significant policy reversal: the State Bank of Pakistan had previously issued warnings against crypto use, and the country had maintained broad restrictions on virtual assets before establishing the Pakistan Crypto Council in 2025 and pivoting toward formal regulation. The framework covers ten license categories spanning exchanges, custody, lending, derivatives, and asset management. PVARA opened its licensing portal on August 22, and transitional operators faced a September 5 deadline to file no-objection certificate applications or halt operations. New applicants must be licensed before offering services. Penalties for unlicensed activity now reach PKR 50 million (roughly $179,000) and up to five years in prison. Saqib noted at the briefing that Pakistan built this regulatory infrastructure for approximately $200,000, a figure he offered as evidence that formal crypto governance is within reach for low-income countries.

The domestic stakes are significant. Pakistan is reported to have approximately 27.1 million active crypto users, representing about 11.3% of the population. Around 100 million Pakistani adults, or roughly 62% of the country, remain outside the formal banking system, and women's banking access sits at just 7%. Official remittance inflows run between $30 and $35 billion annually, and the Exchange Companies Association of Pakistan has projected that figure could reach $50 billion if blockchain-based corridors are formalised. Pakistan also processes an estimated $25 billion per year through informal hawala networks, transfers that by their nature fall outside regulatory oversight and consumer protection frameworks.

The regional picture reinforces the argument Pakistan made at the UN. Seven of the top ten countries in Chainalysis's 2025 Global Crypto Adoption Index were in Asia. In Sub-Saharan Africa, stablecoins (digital tokens pegged to a reference currency, typically the US dollar) already account for 43% of all crypto transaction volume, the highest share anywhere in the world. Mobile money combined with crypto payment rails has brought remittance costs on some African corridors down to between 1% and 3%, compared with the continent's traditional average of 7.9%. Closer to home, Pakistan's framework is already being discussed as a potential template for Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and Nepal, countries that share similar combinations of large unbanked populations and high remittance dependence. A multilateral UN framework would give regulators in those markets legal footing to formalise infrastructure that is already being used at scale.

Pakistan's decision to route this push through the UN carries a specific signal. The EU's MiCA regulation is now fully implemented and referenced by 14 non-EU jurisdictions. The US GENIUS Act and the OECD's Crypto-Asset Reporting Framework are also reshaping norms: MiCA originated in Brussels, the GENIUS Act in Washington, and the OECD's framework through a multilateral body headquartered in Paris. Pakistan's position, backed by UNDP, UNCTAD, and OSET participation, is that the Global South needs co-authorship over the next generation of financial regulation, not just compliance obligations handed down from existing power centres.

Sixty-eight countries have now enacted or proposed crypto-specific legislation, up from 42 in 2024, and 48 began collecting CARF-aligned transaction data in January 2026. The trend toward national-level frameworks is already well underway. What Pakistan is asking for at the UN is coordination above that layer so that the rules governing cross-border digital finance do not end up as incompatible silos. The institutional appetite, reflected in UNDP, UNCTAD, and OSET's co-sponsorship of this week's briefing, suggests the conversation has moved past the preliminary stage.