Plenty of officials talk about AI. Plenty of founders talk about crypto. Bilal bin Saqib has spent years following both and has since helped build the institution that regulates virtual assets in Pakistan. Now he has put a date on his expectations for what comes next: 2028.Pakistan’s Minister of State and Chairman of the Pakistan Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority (PVARA) came to government from the digital-assets industry. He has worked in the sector since 2016. His public record of engagement with these technologies stretches back well before his appointment.His earlier work included co-founding Tayaba, a social enterprise addressing Pakistan’s water crisis, and recognition in Forbes’ 30 Under 30. In 2023, he received an MBE for services to the NHS and his community during the pandemic, through the One Million Meals campaign he co-founded.His transition into government gathered pace in 2025. In March, he became chief executive of the newly launched Pakistan Crypto Council, chaired by Finance Minister Muhammad Aurangzeb. In May, he was appointed the prime minister’s special assistant on blockchain and crypto, with the status of a minister of state.Then came the regulator. The Virtual Assets Ordinance of July 2025 established PVARA to license, regulate and supervise virtual asset service providers. Saqib was appointed its chairman in August, serving pro bono. He later relinquished the special assistant role while retaining the PVARA chairmanship.The framework acquired a permanent statutory basis with the Virtual Assets Act in March 2026. On August 21, PVARA notified its licensing regulations and opened its application portal. Existing operators covered by the transitional provisions were required to apply by September 5 or cease operations.Less than six months separated the Act from the opening of the licensing framework. According to the government’s published account, PVARA used less than 8 per cent of its approved budget and returned approximately 92 per cent to the exchequer. The next test is sustaining that delivery through effective supervision and enforcement.His international engagements have taken Pakistan’s experience into the wider debate about financial technology. In September, he participated in a UN Digital Cooperation Day discussion on blockchain and tokenisation, hosted in collaboration with Pakistan’s UN mission and PVARA. The discussion addressed practical economic uses alongside sovereign choices and safeguards. He is making the case that Pakistan is a market worth building in.His broader argument is that AI and digital assets are converging. Software agents that perform economic tasks may also need to pay for services. That raises questions about payment systems, authorisation and accountability that regulators should understand before adoption accelerates.He also leaves a public record of how his thinking has developed. In March 2018, he was posting Bitcoin charts when, by his own account, many people around him dismissed crypto as a scam. This October, he returned to that post after J.P. Morgan Asset Management included a range of Bitcoin returns in its 2027 Long-Term Capital Market Assumptions for the first time. The firm stopped short of including Bitcoin as an allocation in the framework.Saqib’s summary: “Eight years. Same conviction. Different audience.”The episode captured how far the institutional conversation had moved. His writing in the intervening years also explored practical applications. In May 2022, he discussed blockchain’s potential role in land records, educational credentials and formalising Pakistan’s digital-asset economy. By 2023, he was attending EthCC in Paris and arguing that Asia would help shape the next phase of Web3.His interest in AI developed alongside that work. In February 2022, months before ChatGPT’s launch, he posted a thread about the AI singularity. In November 2023, he wrote in his newsletter about OpenAI’s DevDay and where the technology was heading. At Davos in January 2024, he observed that “it’s all about AI” and asked what Pakistan’s answer would be.Together, those posts show what he was studying before technology became his official brief. His latest forecasts make that record easier to assess by adding a deadline.Quoting his 2023 post, he set out his expectations for 2028. AI agents, he wrote, now “plan, use tools, check their own work and keep going for hours”. After a decade in crypto, his assessment was that “nothing there moved this fast.”He expects most new code at leading companies to be written by AI agents, with developers spending more time reviewing and directing the work. He also foresees agents paying one another through stablecoins and tokenised payment systems, the point he describes as “where AI and digital assets meet.” His wider predictions concern how professional work is organised, from drafting documents to reviewing medical scans.His emphasis is on changing the way professionals work: “Not the people. The way they work. The doctor stays. The lawyer stays. The engineer stays. Each one runs a team of agents.”For Pakistan, the argument has particular force when viewed through access to expertise. “We never had enough doctors, lawyers or engineers,” he writes. AI, in his account, could help scarce professional capacity reach many more people.“A GP in a district hospital with an agent that reads the X-ray first is a different health system.”Realising that possibility would require systems tested for local conditions, trained professionals and clear responsibility for decisions. Pakistan would need to invest in adoption while helping workers adapt to changing roles. The opportunity would be measured in better services, wider access and greater productive capacity.Saqib’s 2028 timetable may prove ambitious. Its value lies in bringing choices about skills, institutions and practical applications into the present. A public forecast gives readers a benchmark against which to judge both the prediction and the preparation it prompts.He has invited people to return to his predictions in 2028. By then, the more important question will be what Pakistan did with the time.
