Tether Goes Off-road: Kazakhstan Deal Puts Stablecoin on the Steppe 🐎

Tether has signed a memorandum of understanding with the National Bank of Kazakhstan and the Alatau City Authority to study a stablecoin pegged to the tenge and to pilot real-world asset tokenization, the company said Wednesday. Under the agreement, the parties will review international stablecoin issuance models, identify use cases and develop a proposal for a tenge-backed stablecoin pilot. The memorandum does not name an issuer or set a launch date.

On tokenization, the parties will identify priority asset categories, design a framework and launch a pilot inside Alatau, the planned smart city in the Almaty region, with Tether's Hadron platform, launched in November 2024, named as a possible infrastructure. The deal also includes workshops and training programs for central bank staff covering stablecoin issuance, reserve management and real-world asset tokenization. National Bank of Kazakhstan Deputy Governor Binur Zhalenov said the central bank plans to study international approaches to stablecoin issuance and tokenization while prioritizing financial stability, transaction transparency and investor protection.

Kazakhstan has accelerated its digital asset push this year. In September the government approved a 65-measure plan across 10 areas covering real-world asset tokenization, digital payments, international settlements and crypto mining, and it instructed the Energy and Digital ministries to develop a mechanism for using gas- and coal-fired power generation to supply mining centers. The country ranked among the world's top 10 for Bitcoin production in 2025, according to the government. The National Strategic Crypto Reserve has reached $700 million, with officials saying about $200 million has been invested so far, mostly through hedge funds. BitcoinTreasuries.net ranks Kazakhstan seventh among governments for $BTC holdings, with an estimated 3,544 BTC worth about $294 million.

The country already runs a separate tenge stablecoin pilot called Evo, launched in September 2025 inside the central bank's regulatory sandbox and issued by the exchange Intebix and Eurasian Bank with help from Solana and Mastercard. In March the central bank earmarked up to $350 million for crypto-related investments out of nearly $70 billion in gold and foreign exchange reserves, though officials said the money may go into shares of crypto-linked companies and index funds rather than coins. The National Bank also has a separate plan to tokenize two Alatau properties worth up to $50 million and $10 million, due by the end of 2026 on the Kazakhstan Stock Exchange's infrastructure. Alatau, a $7.2 billion project built from scratch with its own legal regime, is pitched as a fintech hub for Central Asia, with President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev backing cryptocurrency payments for goods and services there.