KARACHI – The state bank of Pakistan has issued important instructions tothe Pakistanis over the use of the digital currencies.
SBP has advised people against the usage of cryptocurrency in any kind oftransactions in the country on Friday, saying the new medium of exchangewas neither “recognized as a Legal Tender” nor was “authorized or licensed”to anyone.
According to a circularlink> issued by thecentral bank, the Virtual Currencies/Coins/Tokens provide a high degree ofanonymity and potentially can be used for facilitating illegal activities.
“The communique Virtual Currencies (VCs) like Bitcoin, Litecoin, Pakcoin,OneCoin, DasCoin, Pay Diamond etc. or Initial Coin Offerings (ICO) tokensare not legal tender, issued or guaranteed by the Government of Pakistan,”stated the regulator.
The financial institution highlighted three main risks involved withdealing in digital currency including high price volatility due tospeculations, failure/closure of Virtual Currency exchanges due to officialregulations and probable hacking.
State Bank also cautioned the general public against pyramid styleinvestment schemes and coins saying the move can inflict a huge financialloss.
“The General Public in their own interest is advised to be cautious of andrefrain from indulging in activities relating to mining, trading,exchanging, transferring value, promoting and investing of VirtualCurrencies/Coins/Tokens.” notified the bank.
It is noteworthy that the trade volume in digital currencies remains low inthe country, however, a score of Pakistani tech-savvy buffs got attractedto the currency after a meteoric rise in the worth of bitcoin.
Bitcoin is currently priced at 6,850.92 US Dollar, however, it rose to near$19,780 in December last year.