Good News For Crypto Traders and HODLers in Pakistan

Congratulations to all my Pakistani Fellows as Sindh High court has asked the Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan (SECP) and the central bank to work with Ministries of Information Technology and Law to develop crypto regulations within three months. This is great news for a struggling country like ours as crypto will generate a lot of revenue. As crypto has brought $20 Billion value of money which is even more than the state of Pakistan foreign reserves.

First, let's talk about the history of Pakistan dealing with crypto. Cryptocurrency started gaining popularity in Pakistan in the last 6-7 years. Mostly, people considered bitcoin and cryptos scams because of their physical existence. Whenever we don't understand something, we call it a scam instead of calling ourselves unware. But luckily, some people are aware now and some people are trying to learn about it after its massive adoption and bitcoin price boom to mars.

So Pakistan created the first coin by the name of Pakcoin in 2015 and its current value is $0.0074. You can read about it more by visiting its official website.

However, the State Bank of Pakistan did not recognize any digital currency back in 2016. They even issued a circular in 2018 stating that the government does not support crypto and crypto-assets transactions must be reported. They considered it would be used for money transactions but they were dumb enough that crypto transactions leave records that can be traced but paper cash cannot be traced.

Even the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) and Federal Investigation Agency (FBR) took legal action against BTC holders by arresting them and taking the possession of BTC from them into their custody. Though there are claims that those BTC are still in the possession of those officers and were not deposited in the National Treasury.

Then comes the entry of Waqar Zaka, A reality TV show Host. He urged the government of Pakistan to make Bitcoin legal when Bitcoin was worth $250. He even started a battle against the FIA, State Bank, and Government by filing a petition against them. He fought the case against them for two consecutive years. He got succeeded in December 2020 when the court passed an order prohibiting authorities from arresting BTC holders.

So basically, Waqar Zaka was a one-man army who contributed and fought alone for crypto recognition in Pakistan. He was the one who openly promoted Cryptocurrency on social media and encouraged people to invest in it despite the ban.

Waqar Zaka does not stop here and he started convincing provincial governments and finally succeeded in getting the permission from KPK government to develop ETH mining farm and an investment of $200K for setting up one of the biggest crypto mining farms functioning on hydro-power in South Asia.

I respect him for what he did for crypto adoption in my country. But there is one thing that I disliked about him. He always uses his fan-following for his personal gains. Like he will ask his followers to start tweeting with Waqar zaka for the next PM. That makes him a bit of a self-obsessed person who only thinks about his popularity. But still, It would be cruel to multiply all his efforts with zero for only this reason. ]

For the last few days, he was spreading FUD against Binance. He was claiming that the Security exchange commission is going to ban Binance on 20th October. So take out all your funds from Binance. People claimed he is doing this because Binance has not listed his coin that's why he is taking revenge now. He shifted himself and all his followers to okex. He has even made his own Facebook group and gives signals there but takes monthly fees of 1500Pkr from every user.

In the end,

I really hope that our judiciary will act upon their decision and instruct the authorities to regulate the crypto in three months. Because our country is the most unpredictable country and we expect anything to happen.

Thank you guys for reading my article.

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