Tether signs MoU with Kazakhstan central bank, Alatau on stablecoin study

Tether signed a memorandum of understanding with the National Bank of Kazakhstan and the Alatau city authority to explore a stablecoin pegged to the local currency, the tenge, and the design of a real-world asset tokenization model, according to digitaltoday.co.kr.

The three parties will first review stablecoin issuance cases from other countries and then draft a concept and a pilot project proposal. No token issuer has been designated and no pilot schedule has been disclosed.

For asset tokenization, the parties will select asset classes, design an operating model and run a pilot within Alatau. The pilot may use Tether's tokenization platform Hadron, which the company unveiled in November 2024.

Alatau is a planned city being developed in the Almaty region with the aim of becoming a Central Asian fintech hub under its own legal framework. President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev has outlined a vision for residents to pay for goods and services with crypto in the city.

Kazakhstan's crypto-linked reserves

In March, the National Bank of Kazakhstan allocated up to 350 million dollars of its roughly 70 billion dollar gold and foreign exchange reserves to crypto-linked investments. In September, the country's crypto reserve reached 700 million dollars, of which about 200 million dollars was actually invested, mostly through hedge funds.

The central bank is pursuing a separate plan to tokenize two real estate properties in Alatau using the Kazakhstan Stock Exchange infrastructure, with asset values of up to 50 million dollars and 10 million dollars and a completion target of late 2026. In September 2025, the tenge stablecoin Evo launched within the central bank's regulatory sandbox, issued by Intebix and Eurasian Bank with support from Solana and Mastercard.