Larry Fink has a gift for making the radical sound reasonable. As chairperson and CEO of BlackRock, the world’s largest investment management firm, he oversees $14 trillion, more than the GDP of every country on Earth except for two.
In his 2026 annual letter, addressed to shareholders of BlackRock, he describes something he calls a “civic miracle”. When ordinary people invest their savings over decades, capital markets channel that money into companies, infrastructure and jobs. The gains compound back to the savers.
Their future and their nation’s future become linked. That cycle, citizens funding national growth and sharing in its returns, is the engine behind every thriving economy Fink examines. Japan expanded tax-advantaged savings accounts and gained ten million new investors in three years. India onboarded a million retail investors via smartphone in under a year. Broad participation in capital markets does not merely reflect prosperity. It creates it.
Pakistan has never had that cycle. Out of 240 million people, roughly 500,000 are active participants in our stock market. That is 0.2 per cent. The KSE-100 was one of the best performing indices in the world in 2024, and almost nobody was part of it. We have had economic growth. GDP crossed $400 billion. Remittances hit a record $38 billion. But the gains flowed to a narrow band of asset owners, those holding land and gold, while the vast majority contributed through labour and sacrifice without ever owning a stake in the upside.
Our people have financed this country’s growth. The growth has not financed them back. Pakistan’s challenge is not only that we are short on capital. It is that we have not yet built enough pathways through which ordinary people can become owners of productive assets.
“At its best, long-term investing performs a kind of civic miracle. When people invest their savings — over decades, not days — the capital markets put that money to work, financing companies, infrastructure, and jobs. And when that cycle happens in your own country, your future and your nation’s future become linked.” — Larry Fink, BlackRock, 2026
This gap is about to get harder to close. Since 1989, Fink writes, a dollar in the American stock market has grown more than 15 times what a dollar tied to median wages has produced. Now AI threatens to accelerate that concentration further. The companies with the data and capital to deploy AI at scale will capture disproportionate value. Fink’s question is not whether AI creates wealth. It will. The question is who participates in it.
The technology to fix this now exists. A freelancer in Sialkot earning in digital currency could, through tokenised financial infrastructure, convert those earnings into a fractional stake in a regulated bond fund, without a brokerage account, without a minimum balance, without the friction that has kept 99.8 per cent of Pakistanis out of capital markets. The same digital wallet that holds an easypaisa balance could hold tokenised government bonds, fractional equity, diversified savings products. The “civic miracle” Fink describes becomes technically possible for the first time. Your money funds your country’s growth. Your country’s growth funds your future.
Pakistan has begun building this architecture. PVARA was established by presidential ordinance. This March, Parliament passed the Virtual Assets Act 2026. A permanent legislation granting licensing powers, anti-money-laundering mandates, and a remit to integrate blockchain technology into the architecture of Pakistan’s financial system. A regulatory sandbox is live. Two of the world’s largest exchanges have received initial clearances. These are not gestures. They are the structural reforms needed to bring 240 million people into a system that has, until now, served 500,000.
Fink ends his letter with a memory. His parents, a shoe store owner and an English teacher, saved modestly and invested in the 1950s. They helped finance America’s highways and its industrial boom. The gains compounded back to them.
I think about Pakistan’s parents. The ones who sold gold to pay school fees. Who sent sons to the Gulf and waited for Hundi transfers. Who kept savings in steel almirahs because no financial product was ever designed for them. They financed this country’s growth too, through sweat and sacrifice. But the gains never compounded back.
Larry Fink has described the architecture that could change this. Now it is ours to build.
The writer is CEO of Pakistan Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority (PVARA).
