Pakistan: Authorities prohibit banks from making transactions with cryptocurrencies
The Central Bank of Pakistan issued a statement in which it expressly prohibits the country's financial companies from working with cryptocurrency companies, becoming the last institution of this type to block activity.
In a statement posted on its website (and circulated through social media), the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) expressed, in a textual manner:
"... all banks / IFDs / microfinance banks and payment system operators (PSOs) / payment service providers (PSPs) must refrain from processing, using, negotiating, maintaining, transferring value, promoting and investing in virtual currencies / tokens. In addition, banks / IFD / Microfinance Banks and PSO / PSP will not facilitate their clients / account holders to carry out transactions in VCs / ICO Tokens. In this sense, any operation performed will be reported immediately to the Financial Monitoring Unit (FMU) as a suspicious transaction.
The local reactions were immediate and Urdubit, the first cryptocurrency exchange in the country, launched in 2014 with the aim of building a base of support for the region, said it will close its doors. The decision was announced through Facebook, and the startup urged its clients to "withdraw their funds as soon as possible."
Urdubit's Facebook post included a link to the central bank's correspondence, which included a warning that the transactions were labeled suspicious.
Speaking to CoinDesk, Rodrigo Souza, co-founder of BlinkTrade (which provided the open source software used by Urdubit), argued that the central bank's measure aims to curb investment in cryptocurrencies.
Governments and banks are going to fight Bitcoin because investing in it means a banking operation in the central bank, "he said, adding:" We are working hard to return all PKRs to all our clients before our bank closes our accounts. .
The measure comes a day after the Central Bank of India prevented banks from doing business with cryptocurrency exchanges.