Pakistan’s Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority opened its licensing portal on August 23 under the Virtual Assets Act 2026, putting exchanges, custodians, brokers and other virtual asset service providers on a hard clock to register by September 5 or exit the market. Chairman Bilal bin Saqib said firms active on or before March 5 are transitional persons that must seek a No Objection Certificate by the deadline or cease operations, with unfiled activity treated as a criminal offense under Section 70. The portal also accepts full licence and regulatory sandbox applications across 11 categories, requiring local incorporation, capital thresholds, fit-and-proper checks, and AML, cybersecurity and business continuity controls; offshore platforms must form a Pakistani subsidiary after an NOC and Financial Monitoring Unit registration. The framework formalizes one of the world’s largest informal crypto markets—long driven by remittances, a weak rupee and stablecoin use via peer-to-peer and offshore channels—and responds to IMF and FATF pressure for anti-money-laundering supervision. Binance and HTX already hold preliminary certificates. Officials cast the regime as investor protection that can unlock banking rails, remittance and tokenization use cases, though heavy rules risk pushing activity back underground if enforcement falters.