Pakistan’s top crypto regulator called for digital assets to be assessed individually under Islamic law after meeting with a prominent scholar whose recent fatwa broadly rejected purchases made with cryptocurrency.
Pakistan Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority (PVARA) Chairman Bilal bin Saqib said Saturday that he held a “constructive discussion” with Mufti Taqi Usmani about digital assets and the continuing debate over their Sharia status.
Saqib said the two agreed on the need to protect Pakistanis from “fraud, exploitation, and financial harm,” but argued that blockchains, stablecoins, tokenized real-world assets and other digital assets represent different technologies and use cases that should not be evaluated as a single category.
“They merit careful technical assessment alongside rigorous Shariah examination, rather than being viewed through a single lens,” Saqib said in an X post.
His comments followed the circulation on Friday of a fatwa issued June 10 by Usmani and several other scholars affiliated with Darul Ifta at Jamia Darul Uloom Karachi. The ruling said cryptocurrencies do not qualify as “maal,” or wealth, under Sharia and described them as fictitious numerical entries recorded in an account.
