Kazakhstan central bank signs Tether deal to study tenge stablecoin

The National Bank of Kazakhstan, Tether and the Alatau City Authority have signed a memorandum of understanding to study stablecoins, asset tokenisation and decentralised finance, the parties said on Wednesday. The work includes examining a potential stablecoin pegged to the Kazakhstani tenge, though the agreement is exploratory and does not amount to a decision to issue such a token.

Under the memorandum, the group plans to study how comparable tokens operate elsewhere, identify possible uses and prepare a proposal for a pilot. Tokenisation is also on the agenda: the parties said they will identify which types of assets could be suitable for blockchain-based representations, potentially allowing instruments from bonds to real estate to be transferred, traded or used as collateral over digital networks, and plan a pilot in Alatau, a city operating under a special legal regime designed in part to encourage financial technology. Tether's Hadron platform, which provides infrastructure for issuing and managing tokenised assets, is one technology being considered.

Tether is best known as the issuer of USDT, the world's largest U.S. dollar stablecoin with about $140 billion in circulation. It also issues XAUT, a roughly $3.3 billion tokenised gold product backed by physical bullion held in Swiss vaults. The company has been expanding beyond stablecoins, investing across energy, payments, commodities and tokenisation infrastructure as it seeks to build a broader financial and digital-asset business.

Kazakhstan has been building out its digital-asset framework while keeping its central bank closely involved in the process. "As part of piloting tokenization projects, we intend to thoroughly study international best practices in stablecoin issuance and real-world asset tokenization," NBK Deputy Governor Binur Zhalenov said. Tether and the Kazakh authorities will also run workshops on stablecoin reserves, issuance and tokenisation for central bank staff and other government agencies.