The token regulation story in Pakistan began with a religious legal ruling. Scholars like Mufti Taqi Usmani previously concluded that USDT and other cryptocurrencies do not fall under the category of "wealth" recognized by Islamic law. In a country where religious law significantly impacts financial regulation, this is not an opinion that can be ignored but rather a brick placed directly on the market valve. Recently, Bilal bin Saqib, the chairman of the Pakistan Virtual Asset Regulatory Authority, entered Usmani's office, and the core dispute of their discussion was condensed into one question: What kind of digital accounting rights deserve to be called "wealth" in a religious sense? Should tokens like USDT, which are pegged to fiat currencies, tokenized RWA, and various on-chain products, be uniformly excluded by religious rulings, or should there be a technical risk and structural breakdown done first, followed by an individual assessment by Islamic law? Bilal bin Saqib clearly proposed a classification evaluation during the talks, hoping to leave regulatory space for different types of on-chain assets without violating the authority of religious rulings. Almost simultaneously, far away in East Asia, Japan’s financial group SBI Holdings made a completely different bet: exclusively investing $125 million in a C-round bet on Gauntlet, participating in a $76 million C-round for EDX Markets, and spending about $289 million to acquire the Japanese crypto exchange Bitbank, pushing its business onto the blockchain with real capital. One is cautiously probing the boundaries between religious law and regulation, while the other is using a series of investments to write the "token economy" into its balance sheet. This misalignment of "religious brakes" and "capital acceleration" has pulled the global regulatory divergence over the same technology into the spotlight.

USDT Denied as Wealth: Religious Ruling Sparks Controversy

In Pakistan, the true brake is not the regulatory provisions, but a religious legal ruling. Considered one of the important contemporary Islamic scholars, Mufti Taqi Usmani, along with other scholars, concluded that USDT and other crypto assets do not constitute "wealth" recognized by Islamic law. This is not an ordinary comment but a religious legal judgment that carries authority in Pakistan and even in the broader Islamic world, announcing that even if these tokens have prices and liquidity in the market, they are still considered "nothing" in a religious sense and are not part of the traditional wealth category.

The problem is that another system is already on its way. The Pakistan Virtual Asset Regulatory Authority, chaired by Bilal bin Saqib, has been building a framework for regulating crypto assets in recent years and hopes to classify, record, and supervise these tokens using modern financial language, but now it has been effectively halted by this "non-wealth" ruling. Regulators are attempting to treat tokens like USDT, which are pegged to the dollar, as regulated financial products, while religious law fundamentally denies that they are wealth itself. Market participants have begun to question: if the issue of "whether it is wealth" cannot be clarified, what standards should be used to design subsequent permissions, disclosures, and taxes? The hesitation around the status of digital assets under the religious legal system leaves every regulatory provision and compliance cost hanging in the air, and the debate over "whether USDT is wealth" has exposed the greatest uncertainty in Pakistan's digital asset regulation.

Regulatory Chair Takes Action: Separate Assessment for Stablecoins and RWA

After the debate on "whether USDT is wealth" was brought to the forefront, the person holding the rule-making power has finally appeared. Bilal bin Saqib, chairman of the Pakistan Virtual Asset Regulatory Authority, did not align with any party during his talks with Mufti Taqi Usmani but instead began to dissect what has been broadly referred to as "cryptocurrency": one type is settlement tokens represented by USDT, anchored to fiat currency prices; another is real-world assets packaged in token form; and a third is more abstract on-chain products and protocols. He proposed that these three types of products should not be regarded as the same, and they should not be labeled with "non-wealth" because of a single religious ruling. Instead, they should undergo separate technical assessments and religious evaluations, with each line operating independently.

For Bilal, this is not merely a technical debate among scholars but an effort to reclaim operational space for the entire regulatory system. Technical evaluations can answer questions like "Is it safe? Is it transparent? Is it traceable?" while religious evaluations focus on "Does it constitute gambler-like speculation? Does it erode traditional contractual structures?" The separation of these tracks means that scholars can continue to maintain a negative attitude toward certain high-risk tokens while reserving the possibility of "conditionally accepting" tokenized assets or payment tokens. In a country where religious law is deeply embedded in financial regulation, this proposal for classification assessment represents a regulatory gap cautiously explored under hard constraints of religious law: it neither directly collides with existing rulings nor lays the groundwork for potential tiered licensing, differentiated tax systems, and pilot projects in different scenarios, providing a negotiable middle path between "total denial" and "complete openness."

Japan's SBI Throws Hundreds of Millions: Betting on the Token Economy's Full Chain

While Pakistani regulators are still deliberating on how each type of token can pass religious scrutiny, Japan's financial giant has begun to invest real capital to move its future onto the blockchain. In recent years, SBI Holdings has consistently emphasized its business transition to the blockchain and the layout of the token economy in public statements. According to a single source, it exclusively invested $125 million in Gauntlet's C-round, participated in EDX Markets' $76 million C-round financing, and invested approximately $289 million to acquire the Japanese domestic crypto exchange Bitbank. On the surface, these three funding flows are merely scattered financial investments, but viewed from the same coordinate system, it is essentially betting on the foundational infrastructure, trading scenarios, and risk models of the token economy simultaneously, trying to take possession of a complete chain from asset issuance to trading liquidity and risk pricing.

In this narrative, SBI is not simply betting on a single new asset but betting on a future where "all assets can potentially be tokenized": risk and parameter research like Gauntlet becomes the computational hub of the token economy; EDX Markets represents a new form of market organization; Bitbank serves as a front-window connecting Japanese domestic funds directly to the on-chain world. Unlike Pakistan, which is cautiously opening a regulatory gap for the token economy under the shadow of religious rulings, the regulatory environment in Japan provides SBI with greater institutional space, allowing this financial group to accelerate with hundreds of millions of dollars in capital to quickly establish a complete framework of on-chain services. During the same timeframe, one side is cautiously exploring with religious "brakes," while the other side has a systematic layout with capital "accelerating." The bifurcation of these two paths is reshaping the future geography of the global token economy.

On the One Hand, Religious Brakes; On the Other, Capital Accelerating

In Pakistan, Bilal bin Saqib proposed a classification experiment "pressed forward" by religious rulings: first admitting the religious ruling's qualitative assessment that USDT and other crypto assets are "non-wealth," then opening separate technical evaluation channels for stablecoins and tokenized RWA in the gaps created, trying to separate the evaluations of "can this go on-chain" and "is this compliant with religious law" into two different checkpoints. If this design is adopted, it would mean that the same token product in Pakistan would need to pass dual scrutiny of both technical and religious evaluations; any failing link could lead to an overall veto. Conversely, if the religious authorities insist on existing rulings, this classification model could be paused at any time, leaving the market forever in a gray area of "negotiable but difficult to implement."

In contrast, the path of Japan’s SBI forms a mirror image: under the premise that the existing financial regulatory framework has provided basic boundaries, it uses exclusive investments in Gauntlet of $125 million, participates in EDX Markets' $76 million financing, and acquires Bitbank for about $289 million to treat the "token economy" as a business that can be rapidly scaled. Here, the categorization is no longer about "whether it can exist" in the religious sense but rather about dividing business lines within the scope of regulatory approval—whether to build infrastructure, trading platforms, or service outsourcing. For cross-border projects, this difference will directly rewrite the compliance landscape: on one hand, Pakistan—a strict reliance on religious rulings—raises the entry threshold and increases local compliance costs; on the other hand, Japan, which allows large institutions to enter deeply, provides a smoother path for projects and funds to land, objectively creating regulatory arbitrage space that concentrates capital in regulatory-friendly and active jurisdictions, thereby causing a noticeable shift in the global flow of capital in the token economy between Pakistan and Japan.

The Question of a New Order for the Token Economy from Pakistan to Tokyo

From Bilal bin Saqib's efforts to “disassemble and restructure” between religious rulings and regulatory classifications in the Pakistan Virtual Asset Regulatory Authority to Japan's SBI Holdings increasing its commitment to token economy assets through multiple publicly announced investments and acquisitions, one path is a cautious exploration tightly controlled by religious law, while the other is an aggressive route driven by capital, continuously increasing stakes in the on-chain business landscape. As of July 2026, Pakistan remains at the stage of dialogue statements and existing religious rulings, with briefings not disclosing subsequent legislative or execution details. Whether Bilal's proposal to "separate the evaluation of fiat-pegged tokens, tokenized RWA, and other blockchain products, while establishing a degree of independence between technical assessments and Islamic legal evaluations" will be written into institutional texts and how it can be implemented in a country with a high degree of religious law embedded in financial regulation will determine whether the local token economy is long suppressed or gradually restarted within the framework of religious law. Correspondingly, SBI has already tied itself to the upward curve of the token economy through exclusive investments of $125 million in Gauntlet's C-round, participation in EDX Markets' $76 million C-round, and spending approximately $289 million to acquire Bitbank, but the specific technical path and timeline of its on-chain transformation remain undisclosed. This also means that whether Tokyo's "capital acceleration" evolves into a replicable regulatory model or remains an exception within the Japanese financial system is still to be observed. Moving forward, whether Pakistan introduces clear classification regulatory details, whether religious and technical evaluations can truly achieve relative separation, and when and how SBI will disclose clearer on-chain business plans will become critical signals for assessing whether the global regulatory landscape for the token economy will trend towards diverse coexistence or gradually converge to a few models.

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