Pakistan formalizes crypto oversight and national bitcoin strategy, including 2,000 MW mining plan

After years of widespread unofficial digital-asset activity, Pakistani authorities have launched a coordinated push to bring that market under formal control. Regulators signalled the move was driven by the sheer scale of participation — tens of millions of retail traders operating with little oversight — and by a desire to channel value back into public coffers and legal frameworks. The new approach includes transferring assets held by the state into formal custody arrangements to introduce transparency, standards and accountability where previously none existed. Alongside custody reforms, policymakers are weighing a national program to monetize surplus electricity through large-scale bitcoin mining and related compute facilities, and they are in talks with international miners and AI-compute operators. A concrete planning figure — an energy allocation on the order of two thousand megawatts — has been cited as the basis for feasibility studies that will examine economics, grid impacts and environmental considerations. Regulatory officials present this as part of an industrial strategy: converting underused energy into revenue-generating compute capacity rather than leaving it idle. For domestic consumers, formal rules should reduce fraud risk and clarify legal status; for the state, they promise new revenue channels and a way to treat certain digital holdings as sovereign assets. However, the initiative introduces execution risks around energy pricing, emission standards, and the design of public–private partnerships, and it will test Pakistan’s institutional capacity to manage cross-sector projects. The presence of a large unbanked and youth-dominant population underpins the urgency: policymakers want accessible financial rails and saving tools that were previously absent for many citizens. International participants may bring capital and technical know-how, yet their involvement will require strict contractual frameworks to avoid regulatory arbitrage or capital flight. Market actors will watch custody rules, licensing terms and taxation closely; those details will ultimately determine whether Pakistan becomes an attractive operating environment or a high-risk frontier. In short, the strategy reframes crypto from an unregulated social phenomenon into a set of state-managed economic instruments — an ambitious pivot whose benefits hinge on governance, energy policy alignment and transparent execution.