Bilal bin Saqib, chairman of the Pakistan Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority (PVARA), told a Senate committee in August that Pakistan has roughly 40 million crypto-linked accounts.

The Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan recorded 583,052 stock market investors at the end of June. Accounts are not people, and one person can hold several, but that still leaves nearly 70 crypto accounts for every registered stock market investor.

That gap is why last month’s talks in Bangkok matter. On the sidelines of the IMF and World Bank annual meetings, PVARA discussed digital bonds and tokenized sukuk with the World Bank and the International Finance Corporation, and Finance Minister Muhammad Aurangzeb raised the possible tokenization of Pakistan’s Eurobonds with Deutsche Bank. Putting government savings products on the same rails as stablecoins could reach phones that have never opened a brokerage app.

By its regulator’s count, Pakistan has spent 15 months opening the door. The next 15 should go into building the way out.

—Vugar Usi

That is a real opportunity. But tokenization only handles the entrance. If Pakistan gets the entrance right and the exit wrong, it will hand millions of first-time investors an asset they can buy in seconds and cannot easily sell.

Blockchain does not guarantee a buyer

BlackRock’s tokenized fund, BUIDL, holds about $2.2 billion but has 103 holders, and only 34 addresses used it in the past 30 days. Most are institutions that create or redeem tokens directly with the issuer.

Pax Gold, a gold-backed token of similar size at about $1.8 billion, has more than 110,000 holders and recorded over 110,000 transfers in the past month, because it trades continuously on exchange order books with active market makers.

Both run on public blockchains, and on-chain transfers are not necessarily trades. But the contrast shows that tokenization alone tells us little about how easily investors can sell.

BUIDL was designed around institutional subscriptions, redemptions and restricted transfers. Institutions can hold paper to maturity or deal directly with the issuer. A saver in Faisalabad selling a tokenized bond to cover a hospital bill may have neither option. They need a buyer on the other side of the screen, today.

Pakistan has already learned this lesson

For years, government debt was listed on the PSX with little secondary trading. In December 2023, the government held its first Ijarah sukuk auction on the exchange, and sukuk now trade there in Rs5,000 units.

Trading picked up once the market had its plumbing. By the end of FY2026, 11 banks and three asset management companies had direct market access, and 51 brokers were set up to trade government sukuk. Average daily traded value in the debt market rose to Rs3.9 billion, from Rs2 billion a year earlier. Tokenized sovereign debt will need the same setup.

The case for issuing first

Some will say this puts the cart before the horse: issue first, attract investors, and traders will arrive. Demanding deep secondary markets on day one could smother a sector that has existed in law for barely seven months.

There is something to this, because no market launches deep. But BUIDL shows that scale alone does not create a broad retail market, and government debt sat on the PSX with little trading until banks and brokers were connected to it. If liquidity is added only after thousands of savers find they cannot get out, most of the cost will be paid in trust.

Protection and literacy are part of the exit

PVARA’s licensing rules already require providers to keep customer assets separate from their own and bar them from lending or pledging those assets without written consent. But if a tokenized bond is recorded both on the Central Depository Company (CDC) register and on a blockchain, which record decides ownership when a platform goes under? That answer belongs in law before retail sales begin.

Many Pakistanis came to digital assets through stablecoins and remittances, where getting out is a tap away. A tokenized sukuk can look the same in the app, yet it has a fixed maturity, its price moves with interest rates, and on a Friday afternoon there may be no buyer at all. If nobody explains that before people buy, the first bad week will feel like a betrayal, whoever is to blame.

What Pakistan should do before its first retail token

Regulators and industry should agree on four things.

Put legal title in law. State whether a token is legal ownership of the bond or only a claim on it, and which record wins when the CDC register and the blockchain disagree.

Require designated market makers. Every tokenized debt product should have contracted liquidity providers, whether banks, primary dealers or crypto market makers, obliged to quote buy and sell prices from day one.

Judge pilots by secondary trading. Measure pilots by how many people buy and sell and how often, not by the rupee value of tokens created.

Standardize an exit disclosure. Before purchase, platforms should show one simple panel: how long it takes to sell, what it costs, how deep the order book is and what the redemption terms are.

Pakistan’s real advantage

Pakistan starts with tens of millions of people who already use digital finance. That is a powerful advantage, as long as access comes with protection.

The first time that saver in Faisalabad tries to sell a tokenized sukuk to pay a hospital bill, the whole system will be judged on whether the money comes out. By its regulator’s count, Pakistan has spent 15 months opening the door. The next 15 should go into building the way out.

The writer is CEO of MEXC, a cryptocurrency exchange.

This content does not constitute investment advice. Given the volatility of financial markets, including digital assets, tokenized assets and traditional financial products, investors should carefully assess market conditions, underlying asset fundamentals and potential financial risks before making any investment or trading decisions.