A couple of weeks before the Pahalgam attack, something strange happened in Islamabad.

Changpeng Zhao, the Chinese-born Canadian businessman and founder of Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, agreed to be an advisor to the Pakistan Crypto Council (PCC) in early April.

PCC, freshly minted in March, was cobbled together to create a framework for crypto in a country that had until then been notoriously suspicious of digital currencies.

At the time, many wondered what Pakistan’s motivation was in welcoming crypto, which officials maintained was a tool to attract foreign investment. In the subsequent months and during Operation Sindoor, it became clear that the move had a strategic angle as well.

Pakistan, having signed up with World Liberty Financial (WLF), a crypto company linked to US President Donald Trump’s family, was also using crypto to gain currency with the White House. That, along with carrots like a Nobel peace prize nomination for Trump, may have influenced the US’s tepid pushback on Pakistan during the conflict.

On July 9, Pakistan went all in with President Asif Ali Zardari signing an ordinance establishing the Pakistan Virtual Asset Regulatory Authority (PVARA), “an autonomous federal body empowered to license, regulate and supervise entities dealing in virtual assets (VA)”.

That is quite a move for a struggling economy desperate for bailouts from the International Monetary Front (IMF), but the reality is that Pakistan is not alone in embracing crypto.

The US is racing to legitimise stablecoins—a type of cryptocurrency pegged to stable assets. Almost 98% of stablecoins are tied to the dollar. India’s neighbour Bhutan has quietly built bitcoin reserves worth $1.3 billion or roughly 40% of the country’s gross domestic product (GDP), according to the Wall Street Journal . Countries like Russia, Iran and North Korea have been using it to conduct business, beyond the reach of the international sanctions regime.

Link: https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/markets/cryptocurrency/crypto-news/trump-backs-crypto-pakistan-embraces-it-how-long-must-india-wait/articleshow/122414337.cms?from=mdr