Pakistan’s crypto chief makes the case for a national Bitcoin reserve

Pakistan isn’t just warming up to Bitcoin. It’s building a vault for it. Bilal Bin Saqib, chairman of the Pakistan Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority (PVARA), has been making the rounds at global crypto conferences pushing a simple but ambitious idea: Pakistan should hold Bitcoin as a strategic national asset. Not for trading. Not for speculation. For sovereign preparedness. From seized coins to state reserves The concept first surfaced during Saqib’s keynote at Bitcoin Vegas 2025 on May 29, 2025, where he laid out a plan to repurpose Bitcoin already in government custody. Law enforcement agencies across Pakistan have seized digital assets through various criminal proceedings over the years, and those coins have mostly sat in limbo. Saqib’s pitch is to formalize that stash into a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve managed through a national wallet. By February 2026, Saqib reported that the first governance milestone had been reached: transitioning state-held digital assets into formal custody arrangements designed for transparency and accountability. The reserve strategy is part of a much larger digital overhaul. Pakistan’s government has also moved to redirect 2,000 megawatts of surplus e...