Pakistan establishes ties with El Salvador, with bitcoin front and center
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Promote with Leviathan NewsPakistan and El Salvador have inaugurated formal diplomatic relations for the first time, explicitly centering the new relationship on cooperation around Bitcoin and digital assets. The move follows a visit to San Salvador by Bilal Bin Saqib, special assistant to Pakistan’s prime minister on crypto and blockchain and head of the Pakistan Crypto Council, where he met President Nayib Bukele and El Salvador’s Bitcoin Office to discuss a structured knowledge‑sharing arrangement. The two sides signed or endorsed a framework (described as a letter of intent or information‑sharing agreement) that establishes a formal channel for collaboration on Bitcoin policy, education, mining, sovereign Bitcoin reserves, and financial‑inclusion initiatives based on decentralized technologies. For Pakistan, which has recently set up the Pakistan Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority and announced plans for a strategic Bitcoin reserve and large‑scale Bitcoin mining capacity, the partnership is positioned as a way to draw on El Salvador’s experience as the first country to adopt Bitcoin as legal tender and to model aspects of its Bitcoin Office and state‑level crypto strategy. The agreement matters both diplomatically and in terms of global financial governance. It marks Pakistan–El Salvador’s first-ever diplomatic ties and exemplifies a form of “Bitcoin diplomacy” or “Biplomacy,” in which shared crypto policy becomes a primary axis of bilateral engagement rather than a side issue. Analysts note that such arrangements could give emerging economies alternative channels for financial cooperation outside traditional Western‑dominated institutions, while also raising questions about IMF conditionality, given both countries’ loan programs and the Fund’s concerns over Bitcoin-related public spending and preferential treatment for crypto mining.
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More coverage
- Pakistan, El Salvador Establish Bilateral Ties Based on Crypto (bloomberg.com)
- El Salvador and Pakistan pledge “strategic collaboration” in Bitcoin ... (latinamericareports.com)
- Pakistan establishes crypto ties with El Salvador - Cryptopolitan (cryptopolitan.com)
- El Salvador, Pakistan inaugurate diplomatic relations to collaborate ... (cryptoslate.com)
- Bitcoin Diplomacy - FPIF (fpif.org)
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