Tether (USDT) and Kazakhstan's Central Bank Sign Tenge Stablecoin MoU

A Tenge Stablecoin on the Table

Tether has signed a memorandum of understanding with the National Bank of Kazakhstan (NBK) and the Alatau City Authority to study a stablecoin pegged to the tenge, the country's national currency, with the three parties confirming the deal on Wednesday, October 7. The agreement covers three areas: a possible tenge-backed token, tokenization of real-world assets and decentralized finance. It is exploratory by design. No issuance date, blockchain, reserve structure or commercial issuer has been named, and signing the memorandum does not commit Kazakhstan to issue a token or to adopt Tether's technology. Under the terms, the group will examine how similar tokens operate in other markets, identify use cases inside Kazakhstan and prepare a proposal for a pilot. National Bank Deputy Governor Binur Zhalenov said the regulator intends to study international practice in token issuance and asset tokenization, with financial stability, transaction transparency and investor protection named as priorities. Tether and the Kazakh authorities also agreed to run workshops for central bank staff and other government agencies covering reserve management, issuance mechanics and distributed ledger technology. Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino framed Kazakhstan's work as part of a move toward “sovereign-level financial infrastructure”, although his statement reflects Tether's view of the collaboration and does not confirm any strategic reserve commitment by the country. For Tether, the memorandum extends a diversification push that already reaches well beyond its core product. The company's flagship USDT holds about $140 billion in circulation, and it also issues XAUT, a $3.3 billion tokenized gold product backed by physical bullion stored in Swiss vaults. Investments across energy, payments, commodities and tokenization infrastructure point to a broader financial business, and a central bank partnership fits that direction.

Alatau City, Hadron and Existing Rules

Asset tokenization forms the second pillar of the October 7 agreement. The parties will identify which asset categories are suitable and build a model for issuing them digitally, with any pilot conducted inside Alatau City's special legal regime. A government statement confirmed that constitutional changes effective July 1 created a framework for accelerated-development cities, and Alatau became the first area to operate under the model, which is designed for investment, technology and new economic approaches. Tether's Hadron platform, which handles the issuance and management of tokenized assets, is one technology under consideration; the company describes the system as supporting bonds, equities, stablecoins, funds and commodity-backed tokens through their full lifecycle. No launch date or asset class has been selected for the Alatau pilot. Hadron carries institutional precedent: in August, Tether announced a collaboration with First Data and BKN301 to tokenize institutional real estate in Saudi Arabia, and in July it signed a separate agreement with the Nairobi Securities Exchange to study tokenized securities, though neither project has named a blockchain or an asset list. Kazakhstan enters this work with rules already in place. The National Bank's digital asset framework, effective May 1, 2026, recognizes money-backed stablecoins, tokenized physical assets and digital versions of traditional financial instruments as digital financial assets. The bank licenses providers dealing with unsecured digital assets outside the Astana International Financial Centre, while the financial-market regulator oversees the rest. A tenge token has also been tested before: the National Bank launched its first pilot in September 2025 through its regulatory sandbox, with Intebix issuing a token known as Evo, or KZTE, on Solana alongside Mastercard and Eurasian Bank. That project aimed to connect digital assets with existing financial infrastructure, including crypto-fiat conversions and crypto-card transactions. The new memorandum does not state whether a Tether-built tenge token would replace, expand or run separately from Evo. Kazakhstan's July policy document adds cross-border stablecoin testing, tokenized government bond projects and regulatory work on decentralized finance, with specific attention to Alatau's digital infrastructure.

Two Parallel Tenge Tracks

Read together, the announcements show a central bank keeping its options open. The NBK runs a domestic tenge pilot through its sandbox while simultaneously evaluating Tether's infrastructure under a non-binding memorandum, which points to a regulator testing architectures rather than committing to one. If a token is eventually issued, it would sit in the money-backed camp rather than among algorithmic stablecoins, since the Kazakh framework treats properly reserved instruments as digital financial assets. Two items would move the story from study to issuance: a named reserve model and commercial issuer, and clarity on how a Tether-built tenge token would coexist with Evo. Any asset-class decision inside Alatau's special regime would be the first hard signal.