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Pakistan Allows Banks to Serve Licensed Crypto Firms After Years-Long Ban

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Pakistan has taken a major step toward regulating digital assets, with its central bank now allowing banks to provide services to licensed crypto firms after years of restrictions.

In a circular issued on April 14, the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) confirmed that banks can open accounts for licensed virtual asset service providers (VASPs) and their customers. This replaces a ban that had been in place since 2018.

Shift Toward a Regulated Crypto Framework

The move follows the passage of the Virtual Assets Act 2026 in March, signaling a clear shift toward a structured and regulated crypto environment in Pakistan.

Under the new rules, banks can only work with entities licensed by the Pakistan Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority (PVARA), which oversees digital asset activities in the country.

This development marks a turning point for Pakistan’s crypto stance, transitioning from outright restrictions to a more controlled and compliant framework.

Engagement With Global Crypto Players

In recent months, Pakistani authorities have shown growing interest in building a regulated crypto ecosystem.

In December 2025, officials held discussions with major exchanges such as Binance and HTX as part of efforts to attract established trading platforms into the country.

At the same time, Pakistan has explored blockchain-based financial solutions, including potential use cases for stablecoins in cross-border payments through talks with affiliates of World Liberty Financial.

Banks Limited to Service Providers

Despite the easing of restrictions, the SBP has made it clear that banks cannot directly engage in crypto trading or investment.

Under the framework, banks are prohibited from using their own funds or customer deposits to buy, hold, or trade virtual assets. Their role is strictly limited to offering banking services to licensed crypto firms.

Banks must also open dedicated accounts, known as Client Money Accounts (CMAs), in Pakistani rupees. These accounts are used to process transactions for VASPs and must be kept separate from other accounts to ensure proper fund segregation.

Strict Compliance and Monitoring Requirements

The new rules come with strong compliance obligations.

Banks are required to follow existing anti-money laundering (AML) and counter-terrorism financing (CFT) regulations, while also conducting thorough due diligence on each VASP they work with.

They must update their risk assessment models to account for crypto-related risks and continuously monitor these relationships. Any suspicious activity must be reported to Pakistan’s Financial Monitoring Unit.

A Step Toward Crypto Adoption

The decision reflects Pakistan’s broader push to modernize its financial system and position itself within the global digital asset economy.

While strict oversight remains in place, the opening of banking access to licensed crypto firms could pave the way for increased adoption, innovation, and investment in the country’s crypto sector.

Blockchain

Nesa (NES) Launches on Binance Alpha as Privacy-First AI Layer 1 Enters Global Markets

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Nesa has had one of the more carefully orchestrated token launches in the AI-crypto space this month. On June 24, 2026, Binance Alpha featured Nesa as its first-ever highlighted project, running an airdrop campaign that distributed NES tokens to eligible users based on their Binance Alpha Points — a structure designed to reward active participants rather than bots or passive holders. The same day, NES/USDT spot pairs went live across Binance Alpha, KuCoin, and Bitget, with DigiFinex following with its own listing on June 25.

NES rallied to an all-time high near $1.45 in March 2026 during the broader AI-token surge before retracing to a swing low near $0.72 in April as liquidity rotated back to majors. The token is currently trading around $0.92, with a market cap of roughly $420 million and 24-hour volume of about $38 million.

What Nesa Actually Builds

Nesa is a lightweight Layer 1 blockchain focused on providing a distributed execution environment for AI inference tasks that require high privacy, security, and trust. It allows developers to operate multimodal models — such as language and vision — without trusting a single server or centralized platform, while achieving verifiable results through cryptographic methods.

The technical architecture sets it apart from general-purpose AI compute platforms. To resolve the critical risks of data manipulation, privacy breaches, and monopolistic control inherent in centralized machine learning silos, the protocol deploys Zero-Knowledge Machine Learning alongside a distributed marketplace framework — enabling complex AI models to process and evaluate datasets without exposing underlying sensitive information.

Nesa’s decentralized Model Marketplace already securely hosts more than 1,000 active AI models, encompassing an extensive variety of frameworks including advanced text classifiers and financial sentiment engines. The system applies homomorphic secret sharing to distribute encrypted model fragments across independent mining nodes — meaning no single node ever holds a complete model shard or full query representation, making data integrity mathematically guaranteed rather than trust-dependent.

The Binance Alpha Launch Structure

The decision to feature Nesa as the first highlighted project on Binance Alpha is seen as a significant endorsement within the ecosystem. Binance Alpha is increasingly being used as a launch pathway for early-stage tokens, particularly those that combine strong narrative potential with technical innovation.

Binance also ran a separate booster campaign with a total reward pool of 1 million NES tokens, with a 50,000-winner cap keeping reward distribution broad without being diluted. Tying eligibility to Alpha Points filtered for genuinely active users — a mechanism that tends to produce cleaner initial price discovery than open, first-come-first-served airdrop models where bot activity distorts the distribution.

The mainnet launched on May 9, 2026 with 1 billion NES created at genesis, moving the project beyond a testnet-only narrative and giving the token direct roles in transaction fees, staking, node participation, and governance.

NES Token Mechanics and Supply Structure

NES serves as the gas asset for all on-chain transactions including AI inference queries. Users can pay inference fees in stablecoins, and the system automatically converts them to NES for settlement. That automatic conversion mechanic is a meaningful user experience design — it removes the friction of requiring users to hold a specific token for gas while still creating genuine NES demand through every inference request.

Secondary launch coverage reports 39.83% for ecosystem and community, 25.55% for genesis allocation, 14.62% for investors, 10% for the team, and 10% for initial core contributors. The heavily community-weighted allocation is a deliberate signal that the project is prioritizing long-term adoption over early investor extraction — though actual vesting schedules will determine how that distribution plays out in practice.

Inflation starts at 8% annually and declines by 8% each year until reaching a 1.8% floor — a tapering model that funds early network security and validator rewards while reducing long-term dilution as the ecosystem matures.

Backed by Binance Labs’ Season 7 MVB Accelerator Program, with Harvard and Imperial College-affiliated founders, Nesa enters the public market with more institutional credibility than most AI-crypto launches at comparable stages. Enterprise adoption is the swing factor — Fortune 500 pilots in regulated industries signal real utility, which can compress the gap between narrative value and cash-flow-like network demand.

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Heima (HEI) Surges 73% as Community Votes to Burn 16.5 Million Tokens

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Heima has had a sharp few days. HEI is up 73% in the past 24 hours and 39.8% over the past seven days, significantly outperforming the broader crypto market, which has been down roughly 15.9% over the same period. The move coincides directly with one of the most significant governance decisions in the project’s history — a community vote to permanently burn 16.5 million HEI tokens from the ecosystem allocation.

For a token with a total supply capped at 100 million, that’s not a routine supply management exercise. It’s a meaningful structural shift.

Why the Burn Proposal Matters

The 16.5 million tokens targeted for destruction fall into two groups: 12.05 million tokens still locked under a vesting schedule and 4.45 million already unlocked but never touched or sold — both currently sitting in multi-signature wallets on the Heima Network.

The origin of these tokens explains why the team feels comfortable burning them. They were originally reserved for Polkadot parachain auctions. The Polkadot ecosystem has since shifted from auction-based slot allocation to Coretime sales, meaning Heima can now pay for its network slot directly from the team’s treasury using DOT. The reserved tokens no longer serve their original purpose — and rather than hold them as a potential source of future sell pressure, the team proposed burning them outright.

The Heima Foundation has publicly voted in favor of the proposal, but the final outcome rests with the broader community of token holders. The vote is being conducted entirely on-chain, meaning all transactions and tallies are publicly verifiable. If approved, the burn would reduce the ecosystem allocation by roughly 18.7% of current circulating supply — a deflationary signal that appears to be driving the market’s positive reaction.

What Heima Is Actually Building

The project evolved from Litentry, a decentralized identity protocol that rebranded and pivoted to focus on cross-chain abstraction and multi-chain interoperability. Heima’s core value proposition is letting users manage assets and execute transactions across supported chains from a single, unified account — without manually bridging or holding native gas tokens on each chain.

The HEI token serves three functional roles within this system. It enables decentralized governance through a Polkadot-inspired model where holders submit proposals, a council deliberates, and final referenda are decided by community vote. It facilitates gas abstraction — a network of intent fillers sponsors transaction fees so end-users never need to hold HEI for gas, dramatically lowering the onboarding barrier. And it anchors cross-chain liquidity pools that act as mediation assets to reduce slippage and costs when moving assets between heterogeneous chains.

The underlying security architecture uses Trusted Execution Environments and Secure Multi-Party Computation through what Heima calls Omni Accounts — meaning user assets are secured without relying on any single server or custodian. That privacy-preserving infrastructure is a meaningful differentiator in a cross-chain space where bridge exploits remain a recurring threat.

On the product side, the team is also building Wildmeta — a flagship trading dApp that is expected to launch a new version featuring prediction markets — alongside AgentKeys, an identity product currently in active public development.

A Headwind Worth Noting

The rally hasn’t come without complications. Binance delisted HEI margin trading pairs on May 15, 2026, removing HEI/USDC cross and isolated margin trading — a development that reduces leveraged trading access and potential liquidity depth. The team addressed concerns publicly, reaffirming its development focus without offering a specific price catalyst. The burn proposal appears to have done more to restore confidence than any statement could.

HEI is currently trading around $0.158 with 24-hour volume of roughly $100 million against a market cap of just $13.8 million — a volume-to-market-cap ratio that signals speculative intensity rather than steady accumulation. Whether this momentum extends beyond the burn vote will depend on what Wildmeta’s prediction market launch and the AgentKeys rollout deliver in the coming weeks.

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Bless Network (BLESS) Recovers From All-Time Low as DePIN AI Compute Narrative Fights Back

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Bless Network has had one of the more turbulent post-launch trajectories in the DePIN space. The token launched in September 2025 to significant fanfare — a 250% price surge on day one, listings on Binance, Kraken, Gate, and MEXC, and a market cap briefly touching $403 million. Nine months later, BLESS is trading around $0.0078, roughly 97% below its all-time high of $0.2221. The more relevant number right now is the 27.4% gain over the past seven days — a recovery from the all-time low of $0.003962 hit on June 5, 2026.

The gap between where BLESS launched and where it trades today tells a story that mixes genuine infrastructure promise with uncomfortable insider selling patterns that have repeatedly undercut price recovery attempts.

What Bless Network Is Actually Building

The underlying concept is straightforward and addresses a real problem. Bless is a DePIN platform that aggregates idle computing power from everyday devices — laptops, phones, consumer-grade hardware — into a global distributed compute network designed to serve AI inference, machine learning workloads, blockchain infrastructure, and general web hosting. The pitch is up to 90% cost savings versus traditional cloud providers like AWS and Google Cloud.

The network demonstrated real scale during its testnet phase, growing to over 6.3 million nodes and 2.5 million users — figures that established genuine credibility before the mainnet launch. Node operators receive 90% of service revenues, and the barrier to entry is intentionally low: a browser extension is enough to start contributing compute and earning rewards.

The dual-token model uses TIME as the participation and rewards token within the network, convertible to BLESS, which serves as the governance and staking token. Node operators must stake BLESS to contribute compute resources, directly tying token utility to actual network participation. A percentage of network proceeds goes toward direct token burns, adding a deflationary mechanism as usage grows.

The Insider Selling Problem That Won’t Go Away

Here’s where the story gets more complicated. On-chain data from Arkham Intelligence revealed that on March 26, 2025, the Bless team sold 300 million BLESS tokens worth approximately $3.83 million, triggering a 55% single-day crash. That pattern continued into April 2026, with additional multi-million token sales routed to exchanges like Bitget. The recurring nature of these sales has been the single biggest headwind for BLESS holders trying to accumulate through the project’s narrative cycles.

Until the team either completes its selling program or communicates a transparent vesting and distribution schedule, the overhang will continue capping recovery attempts. The project’s long-term technical merits don’t change that near-term dynamic.

The Roadmap That Matters

Bless has structured its development in clear phases. Phase 1 introduced desktop GPU-sharing nodes and an anti-sybil campaign to ensure fair reward distribution. Phase 2 — currently underway through 2026 — focuses on developer tools including Docker support and automated scaling for seamless application deployment. Phase 3, targeted for 2027, adds fiat payment options and dynamic reward structures based on node performance and demand.

The GPU node rollout is the most watched milestone for analysts tracking the token, since GPU compute access is where actual AI workload demand sits today — and where Bless’s revenue model becomes genuinely competitive against centralized cloud alternatives.

Where BLESS Stands Now

The 27.4% seven-day recovery from the June 5 all-time low is encouraging as a technical signal, but BLESS remains below all major moving averages and in a structural downtrend. The DePIN sector itself is competitive — Render Network, Akash, and Filecoin all occupy parts of the same market with larger established user bases.

What BLESS has going for it is scale at the node level, a consumer-accessible entry model, and a narrative that aligns directly with the AI compute infrastructure demand cycle. What it needs to demonstrate is that insider selling has peaked, GPU node adoption is accelerating, and real developer demand is starting to flow through the network. Until those three things converge, the recovery will remain fragile.

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