Pakistan among top 3 countries for cryptocurrency adoption?
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Loading... - Rahi Chivate
- 29 Jun 2022
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“As per estimates based on crypto trading platform traffic from Pakistan and the industry conversation numbers, there are about 0.5 million web traders and 1.5 (mobile) app traders, while the potential future market size is expected to hit 10 million traders by the end of 2025”, says RAIN Pakistan General Manager Zeeshan Ahmed during a roundtable discussion with the media here recently.
RAIN is the first licenced crypto asset company in the Middle East and one of the key international players in the field.
According to Zeeshan, about 55 percent of the total crypto demand is originating from Punjab only while the country ranks eighth in terms of P2P (person-to-person) trading volume globally. As per a Chainalysis report, Pakistan received US 18.6 billion dollars between July 20 and June 21 last year mostly via unofficial channels, he added.
According to the report, Pakistan received $ 74.4 million through illegal channels and a large chunk of it was received under the heads of child abuse material scams, darknet market, stolen funds, fraud shop and ransom ware, he pointed out.
“At present, Pakistan is in dire need of foreign reserves, but still losing billions of dollars due to the absence of a regulated regime and legal framework,” he said, adding the sooner this business is regulated, the better for the country and investors because no government can stop crypto in future.
Considering the crypto’s inevitable future, he said that even in India formulation of regulations have been started and the crypto exchange companies are getting themselves registered with a tax collection authority. He said India has imposed a 31 percent capital gains tax on income generating from crypto.
Cryptocurrencies in Pakistan: looking for a balance
To a query, Zeeshan said that lack of awareness and capacity buildings of the government functionaries are apparently one of the major impediments to regulating this sector. To another query, RAIN Senior Marketing Manager Shahryar Khalid said almost all the mobile applications currently operational in Pakistan are offering P2P platform to its clients, instead of offering coins purchase from the app, due to which frauds occur as were seen in the recent past.
About the crypto landscape of Pakistan, he said that around two million people have expressed their interest in or liked Facebook pages related to Bitcoin, cryptocurrency, Ethereum and digital currencies.
In addition, two million Google searches per month from Pakistan are related to cryptocurrencies.
“Most of the queries were related to global crypto brands, information specific queries, trading platform queries and action specific queries”, he reveled.
Speaking on the sidelines of the discussion, RAIN Director Public Policy Aatiqa Lateef said they were in talks with the concerned stakeholders, including the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP), Securities & Exchange Commission of Pakistan (SECP), Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA), Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) and the Finance Division to formulate a federal legal framework in line with the Financial Action Task Force’s (FATF) guidelines to regulate the digital space and prevent potential frauds and money laundering. Read More...
