Less than a week after Pakistan unveiled plans to direct 2,000 megawatts of surplus electricity to Bitcoin mines and artificial intelligence data centers, the IMF has asked the Islamabad authorities for “emergency clarification” and arranged an independent virtual meeting to discuss power distribution with the Ministry of Finance.
The request landed in negotiations for Pakistan’s 2025/26 budget, which brought the total revenue received from IMF cash to about $2 billion this year just days after the country made its second payment (USD 1.02 billion (USD 1.02 billion) under its $7 billion expanded fund facility. According to Fitch Ratings, the fund also approved a climate remedy program parallel to $1.4 billion, deepening Islamabad’s reliance on multilateral financing.
An official in the IMF talks acknowledged that the mining announcement complicated lenders’ due debt. “There are concerns about further difficult negotiations on the initiative by the IMF,” the official told SAMAA. “The economic team is already facing severe problems, and this move only adds to the complexity of ongoing negotiations.”
Why Bitcoin mining in Pakistan seems unlikely
New Zealand climate technology investor Daniel Batten, who widely cites modeling Bitcoin’s energy profile in policy debates, believes Pakistan now finds itself out of the same collision course for cryptocurrencies in other debt countries. He wrote on X: “While I am essentially an optimist, I really wish I was wrong, but I think Pakistan will have a hard time following its Bitcoin and Bitcoin mining plan.”
Expanding at this point, Batten lists what he calls the fund “five times the contact”: Bitcoin can reduce remittance costs, dilute the advantages of Seignierage, provide value-added storage for foreign exchange reserves, reduce dependence on multilateral loans, and create a peer-to-peer rails sidestepseppeastepseeseppeastep-controls architecture. “Bitcoin poses a huge threat to the IMF in five ways,” he said.
Then, analysts turn to precedent. He noted: “The IMF has cut or cut ambitions of three countries through Bitcoin adoption plans.” He cited the implementation of stagnant legal firms in the Central African Republic, Argentina’s agreement to anti-Criputo conditions and incremental revisions to its Bitcoin law by El Salvador. “It’s very likely that we’ll see the same strategy as Pakistan. Given Pakistan’s economic vulnerability, the IMF may also succeed.”
According to Patton, the fund’s first step will be a communications campaign that emphasizes “energy shortages,” “high electricity costs,” “unclear encryption regulations” and “AML concerns” as reasons for caution – he believes it is “makeup.” He believes that peer-reviewed research shows that Bitcoin mining can enhance grid reliability through monetized supply, while case studies such as Bhutan and El Salvador show the potential of currency to promote economic self-reliance. “However, economic self-reliance reduces the IMF’s client base as a lender and is therefore not in its economic interest,” he wrote.
Batten added that under its $7 billion expansion fund facility, the fund’s leverage available is enough room to translate warnings into planned conditions. He predicted that the IMF would require compliance with financial action regulations, prohibit sovereign Bitcoin accumulation, and link future spending to policy reversals, “utilizing Pakistan’s reliance on funds to maintain reserves and fulfill existing IMF loan obligations.”
This dependence is distinct. Patton pointed out that Pakistan faces debt repayments of US$12.7 billion in fiscal 2025. Without the support of the IMF, foreign exchange reserves could fall below $4 billion instead of a month’s imported tickets, while the box office payment crisis paid the balance crisis, when the reserves fell to $29.2 billion, down from $2010.22 billion to Rs 100 and Rs 100 and Rs (Perrar) and Rs (Perrar) and Rs (Perrar) pelrar and pkrare and pkrare salide pkrare rar pkrare rar. He warned: “Given the history of the listing of FATF Grey in Pakistan and its reliance on multilateral funds, this could trigger a default of other obligations.”
Patton believes that these bets exceed Pakistan. “This means the gloves have been closed: the IMF is frightened by Bitcoin breaking its debt hegemony and will continue to adopt Bitcoin at a nation-state level.” If Islamabad retreats under pressure, the fund will register what Patton calls a “4/4 record” that blocks Bitcoin plans in debtor countries, which is about “a broader strategy against the adoption of Bitcoin from its debt clients.”
His conclusion is outspoken: “If you have a destructive technique, don’t expect “destructive” to be idle. They will use each technique to retain their favorite monopoly.” For governments that intend to pursue Bitcoin, Patton saw only two viable paths: “Like Bhutan or the United States, where the U.S. does not need the IMF or the U.S. to develop backup loan plans so that the IMF cannot put pressure on you to cut down on policies and plans.”
At press time, BTC traded at $105,335.
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