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Pakistan to Establish a Bitcoin Strategic Reserve, Allocate 2000 Megawatts of Energy for Crypto Mining

by admin May 28, 2025

LAS VEGAS, Nevada — The government of Pakistan has plans to establish a strategic bitcoin

reserve and support bitcoin mining, the country’s Minister of State for Blockchain and Crypto Bilal Bin Saqib announced at Bitcoin 2025 in Las Vegas on Wednesday.

Bin Saqib said that Pakistan’s plans for a strategic bitcoin reserve were inspired by U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration’s own nascent plan for a strategic bitcoin reserve in the U.S., which will — at least at first — be filled with the U.S. government’s holdings from criminal and civil forfeitures, estimated to sit at around 200,000 bitcoins. He also said that the government of Pakistan was following the U.S.’s push for stablecoin legislation, the GENIUS Act, “very carefully.”

Like the bitcoins earmarked for the U.S. strategic reserve, Bin Saquib said that the Pakistani government would not sell its bitcoins.

“This wallet, the national bitcoin wallet, is not for speculation or hype. We will be holding these bitcoins and we will never, ever sell them,” Bin Saqib said.

In addition to setting up a strategic reserve, Bin Saqiib announced that the government of Pakistan has earmarked 2,000 megawatts of electricity for bitcoin mining and AI data centers.“We want to welcome all miners to come to Pakistan, all the infrastructure players to come to Pakistan and build with us,” Bin Saqib said.

Bin Saqib said that the establishment of a bitcoin strategic reserve in Pakistan would be “just the beginning” of the country’s embrace of the crypto industry.

“We have over 100 million unbanked people. They lack tools for saving, for investment, and we want to change that. We want them to break their economic classes. And I really believe that crypto and blockchain can help us take that quantum leap,” Bin Saqib said. “We want to tokenize our illiquid assets. We want to do digital IDs … So Pakistan is looking for allies. Pakistan is looking for access, because Pakistan wants to build.”

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May 28, 2025 0 comments

Crypto Trends

Pakistan crypto chief announces Bitcoin strategic reserve

by admin May 28, 2025

Bilal Bin Saqib, head of Pakistan’s crypto council, announced on May 28 that the country is moving to establish a strategic Bitcoin reserve.

Speaking at the Bitcoin 2025 conference in Las Vegas, Nevada, Saqib said the government of Pakistan followed the United States’ lead in establishing a Bitcoin strategic reserve and is embracing pro-crypto regulatory policies. The government official told the audience:

“Today is a very historic day. Today, I announce the Pakistani government is setting up its own government-led Bitcoin Strategic Reserve, and we want to thank the United States of America again because we were inspired by them.”

The announcement represents a significant departure from the government of Pakistan’s previous stance on cryptocurrencies, holding that crypto would never be legal in the country.

Pakistan’s shift reflects the broader trend of nation-states adopting pro-crypto policies following the regulatory shift in Washington, DC under the President Donald Trump administration.

Bilal Bin Saqib at the Bitcoin 2025 conference announcing a Bitcoin strategic reserve. Source: Cointelegraph

Related: Pakistan appoints special assistant to PM on blockchain and crypto

This is a developing story, and further information will be added as it becomes available.

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May 28, 2025 0 comments

Product Reviews

Donald Trump’s Media Conglomerate Is Becoming a Bitcoin Reserve

by admin May 27, 2025

Trump Media and Technology Group, a publicly traded company in which US president Donald Trump and his family own a majority stake, has raised $2.5 billion to accumulate a “bitcoin treasury.”

On Monday, in response to a report by the Financial Times, TMTG initially denied contemplating any such maneuver. “The Financial Times has dumb writers listening to even dumber sources,” the company reportedly said. But Trump Media and Technology Group appears to have since changed its tune.

In a press release on Tuesday, TMTG confirmed that it has agreed to sell $1.5 billion worth of equity and take on a further $1 billion in debt—and plans to use the proceeds to add vast quantities of bitcoin to its balance sheet.

The deal puts TMTG in competition with a growing stable of bitcoin accumulation stocks, which act as a substitute of sorts for investing in bitcoin, without investors having to handle crypto themselves. In theory, as the price of bitcoin rises and falls, so should the stock price of the companies with large bitcoin treasuries.

“We view bitcoin as an apex instrument of financial freedom, and now Trump Media will hold cryptocurrency as a crucial part of our assets,” said TMTG CEO Devin Nunes in a statement. “It’s a big step forward in the company’s plans to evolve into a holding company by acquiring additional profit-generating, crown jewel assets consistent with America First principles.”

TMTG’s embrace of crypto represents a small part of a more elaborate picture: Within the past year, Trump and his family have forged into almost every segment of the crypto market, despite a chorus of complaints relating to alleged abuses of office and conflicts of interest.

In January, in the days leading up to the inauguration, Trump and his wife Melania both issued their own crypto coins, adding billions of dollars to their paper net worth. That same month, TMTG announced the launch of Truth.Fi, its new fintech division, which partnered shortly thereafter with crypto exchange Crypto.com with a view to offering crypto-related investment products to the public. The president’s sons Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr. meanwhile, have promoted a separate crypto services company, World Liberty Financial, and recently established a bitcoin mining business, American Bitcoin.

The crypto ventures associated with the Trump family have raised hundreds of millions of dollars—partly by selling crypto coins to the investing public and partly by acquiring assets in deals cut with business partners.

“Look back at some of Donald Trump’s ventures over time … he essentially brings the marketing and a built-in audience in return for a relatively large cut,” says Austin Campbell, adjunct professor at NYU Stern School of Business and managing partner at crypto consultancy Zero Knowledge. “American Bitcoin is literally that playbook.”

In May, Eric Trump announced plans to take American Bitcoin public. Like TMTG, the company intends to accrue a large bitcoin treasury and turn itself into a bitcoin accumulation stock. “Our vision for American Bitcoin is to create the most investable bitcoin accumulation platform in the market,” he said when he announced the plan.

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May 27, 2025 0 comments

NFT Gaming

MARA’s Fred Thiel Says U.S. Should Start Mining Bitcoin to Fill Strategic Reserve

by admin May 27, 2025

LAS VEGAS, Nevada — Marathon Digital Holdings (MARA) CEO Fred Thiel has an idea for how U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration can make good on its promises to build out a strategic bitcoin reserve: start mining.

Speaking on a panel at Bitcoin 2025 in Las Vegas on Tuesday, Thiel said that the U.S. government has many potential ways to generate bitcoin to fill the strategic bitcoin reserve that would adhere to the “budget-neutral” acquisition strategy laid out in Trump’s March executive order, including using excess hydroenergy to mine bitcoin domestically.

Though it’s been nearly three months since Trump authorized the establishment of a strategic bitcoin reserve, it remains unclear exactly how — and when — the government will take steps to actually begin filling it, a source of evident frustration among a number of speakers at the conference.

“I think it’s critical,” Thiel said of acquiring bitcoin for the reserve. “The U.S. making a statement that we’re going to have a strategic reserve is an empty statement unless you start putting stuff into it.”

At this point, the reserve is supposed to hold all of the bitcoin that has been sized by the government in civil and criminal forfeitures — estimated to be approximately 200,000 bitcoins. But many in the industry and government, including Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.), think that getting the government’s existing stockpile of bitcoin into a strategic reserve is merely a first step, to be followed by bigger, more meaningful acquisitions.

In March, Lummis re-introduced legislation — the so-called BITCOIN Act of 2025 — aimed at codifying Trump’s plans for a strategic bitcoin reserve. Under Lummis’ plan, after getting all of the forfeited bitcoin into the reserve, the U.S. government would spend the next two to five years converting a portion of its gold certificates into bitcoin.

“We have enough assets in under performing assets that we can get five percent of the world’s bitcoin without spending a single dime,” Lummis said.

However, Lummis acknowledged that it’s unlikely that any real movement on the BITCOIN Act — or, more broadly, taking any significant steps to fill the strategic reserve with anything other than forfeited assets — will come before Congress works its way through stablecoin and market structure legislation.

“It’s going to be a heavier lift than I thought because so many people don’t understand bitcoin,” Lummis said.

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May 27, 2025 0 comments

NFT Gaming

Texas Moves to Adopt Bitcoin Reserve, Needs Final Sign-Off to Become Law

by admin May 22, 2025

In brief

Texas is seeking to become the second U.S. state to formally adopt a Bitcoin reserve.
The bipartisan bill has passed all legislative hurdles, barring a final concurrence vote.
Lawmakers voted 101-42, reflecting a strong but not unanimous bipartisan support.

The Texas House of Representatives has passed landmark legislation seeking to establish a Bitcoin reserve on its third and final reading on Wednesday, moving the state closer to officially adopting crypto as part of its treasury management.

Senate Bill 21, a bipartisan-backed bill, garnered strong support across party lines. It now awaits a concurrence vote on House amendments before heading to Governor Greg Abbott’s desk to be signed into law.

Opposition to the bill had been mounting in the lead-up to its final reading, demonstrating that bipartisan support was not unanimous. On Tuesday, the bill cleared a second reading following amendments, tallying votes at 105 for and 23 against.

For the third reading, those against it had grown to 42, according to unofficial totals released by the House.

Record of the final vote has not yet been certified by the House Journal Clerk and is currently published “for informational purposes only,” the Texas legislature’s website notes, citing the House’s rules and procedures.

It’s worth mentioning that the fiscal impact of the bill “cannot be estimated,” at the moment, according to a Senate amendment note from Jerry McGinty, director of the state’s legislative budget board.

“It is unknown what appropriations would be made for the reserve and the amount and value of qualifying cryptocurrency that would be purchased,” McGinty said, adding that his analysis assumes that any administrative costs “incurred by the Comptroller” could then be “absorbed using proceeds from the reserve.”

Decrypt reached out to the legislative budget board of Texas for comment.

Authored by Senator Charles Schwertner and sponsored in the House by Representative Giovanni Capriglione, the bill opens and supports the establishment and administration of a strategic Bitcoin reserve for the state.

It outlines provisions for investing in crypto and mandates the investment authority of the state’s comptroller over the reserve and other funds.

Once enacted, Texas will become the second U.S. state, after New Hampshire, to maintain reserves in Bitcoin.

Edited by Sebastian Sinclair

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May 22, 2025 0 comments

GameFi Guides

Texas approves Bitcoin reserve bill, awaits governor’s signature

by admin May 21, 2025

Texas is on the verge of becoming the third U.S. state to establish a state-managed Bitcoin.

The Texas Strategic Bitcoin Reserve and Investment Act, SB 21, was approved by the House of Representatives with a vote of 101-42. The bill now heads to Governor Greg Abbott’s desk for final approval.

SB 21 would authorize the state comptroller to invest in Bitcoin and, potentially, other cryptocurrencies with a market cap exceeding $500 billion over the past 12 months.

Currently, Bitcoin is the only asset that qualifies. The legislation also directs the creation of a formal Bitcoin reserve, positioning the state to diversify its financial strategy with digital assets.

The bill’s sponsor, State Senator Charles Schwertner, and House advocate Rep. Giovanni Capriglione, framed the initiative as a move to secure Texas’s leadership in digital innovation.

State’s embrace of Bitcoin

If signed, Texas will join New Hampshire and potentially Arizona in establishing a Bitcoin reserve. However, not all states have embraced the idea.

Governors in Arizona and Montana recently vetoed or blocked similar proposals, citing the volatility of cryptocurrency markets.

Texas, which boasts a $2.7 trillion economy—ranking eighth globally if it were a country—has already positioned itself as a crypto-friendly state. Governor Abbott has previously expressed strong support for digital assets and accepted Bitcoin donations for his political campaigns.

The bill’s passage comes amid renewed momentum for Bitcoin, which recently hit a record high above $109,000.

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May 21, 2025 0 comments

GameFi Guides

Texas House Advances Bitcoin Reserve Bill With Bipartisan Backing

by admin May 21, 2025

In brief

The Texas House passed Senate Bill 21 on second reading with a 105-23 vote, advancing it to third reading.
An amendment adopted Tuesday requires eligible cryptocurrencies to maintain a $500 billion market cap over 24 months.
If enacted, Texas could become the second U.S. state to establish a government-managed Bitcoin reserve, after New Hampshire.

The Texas House of Representatives voted Tuesday to approve Senate Bill 21, its state Bitcoin reserve bill, pushing it past a critical legislative hurdle.

The House began by adopting an amendment from Representative Linda Garcia (D-TX) that doubled the required market capitalization period from 12 to 24 months.

Buoyed by strong bipartisan support, the House passed the Senate Bill 21 with a 105-23 vote, advancing it to a third reading.

The bill is a “forward-thinking measure” that would help recognize digital assets “not as a trend but as a strategic opportunity” key to “strengthening the state’s fiscal resilience,” Giovanni Capriglione (R-TX), its House sponsor, said before the final vote.

Officially dubbed the Texas Strategic Bitcoin Reserve and Investment Act, the bill establishes a framework for the state comptroller to maintain and manage crypto holdings as a “special fund outside the state treasury.”

Initial discussions and proposals for it were first floated in December last year under H.B. 1598.

Under the proposed legislation, the reserve can hold Bitcoin and potentially other cryptos as “a hedge against inflation and economic volatility,” according to the bill text’s House committee version.

The comptroller also needs to submit a report every two years to the legislature on crypto holdings, their value, and any changes during that time. An advisory committee, including crypto investment experts, will guide the comptroller on reserve management.

Progress on Texas’s Bitcoin reserve bill comes roughly two years since the Lone Star state established itself as a major crypto mining hub, consistently ranking as a top choice for crypto mining firms across the U.S.

Still, the bill requires passage on third reading in the House.

Since it was amended, any differences between the House and Senate versions would need to be reconciled before final approval by both chambers.

Only then would it head to the governor’s desk, potentially establishing America’s second state-managed Bitcoin reserve after New Hampshire earlier this month.

The state of Arizona would have followed, but its governor nixed its Bitcoin bill, with only a companion bill for unclaimed crypto being passed two days later.

Edited by Sebastian Sinclair

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Start every day with the top news stories right now, plus original features, a podcast, videos and more.

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May 21, 2025 0 comments