Tether signed an agreement with the Central Bank of Kazakhstan to explore the potential for stablecoins and tokenized assets

Tether has signed a memorandum of understanding with the National Bank of Kazakhstan and Alatau City Authority, preparing to study stablecoins tied to tenge currencies and tokenization plans.

Logging the understanding to prepare for stablecoin and tokenization experiments.

Tether, the world's largest stablecoin developer, announced on Wednesday that it had signed a memorandum of understanding with the National Bank of Kazakhstan and Alatau City Authority to prepare proposals for experimental use of stablecoins tied to Kazakhstani currency tenge as well as an asset token framework.

The first goal of a memorandum is to study how other countries issue stablecoins tied to the main currency, and then all three parties provide ideas and proposals for experimentation without specifying who will be issuing tokens.

For tokenization, which records the ownership of real assets such as buildings or bonds as digital tokens on a blockchain, all three parties will prioritize asset categories, design formats and launch pilot projects within Alatau, possibly using the Hadron platform that Tether launched in November.2024 No date has been announced for the start of testing both projects.

The Memorandum of Understanding is a joint declaration of intent, not a binding contract. It also includes workshops to train National Bank officials on token issuance, reserve management and asset tokenization.

The suburbs of Alatau and the cryptographic map of Kazakhstan.

Alatau is a planned smart city in the Almaty region, rebuilt with its own legal system and positioned as Central Asia's fintech hub. The US$2 million project aims to expand the number of residents from52,000 to 2 million people while President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev wants citizens to pay for goods and services using cryptocurrency.70,000

In March, the National Bank of Kazakhstan allocated up to US$350 million for crypto-related investments from its gold and foreign exchange reserves,70,000 nearly a million US dollars with money likely flowing into shares of cryptocurrency-related companies and sovereign wealth funds instead of directly holding coins.

In September, officials noted that the national crypto reserve reached US$700 million and about $200 million had already been invested, mostly through hedge funds, which are private equity funds that buy and sell on behalf of large investors.

The original project and related cases.

Kazakhstan has a stablecoin-linked token pilot called Evo, launched in September.2025 Within the National Bank's supervisory sandbox that serves as a testing ground for new financial products Evo is issued by Intebix exchange and Eurasian Bank with assistance from Solana and Mastercard. The national bank sets the rules of the test but does not issue its own tokens.

The National Bank also has separate plans to tokenize two properties in Alatau, valued at a maximum of US$50 million and US$10 million respectively, scheduled for completion by the end of the year2026 on Kazakhstan Stock Exchange infrastructure.

The latest deal comes days after a Senate subcommittee's report on the useUSDT of Iran-related and money laundering2.76 lawsuits against Tether.

It's an issue to watch out for.

This suggests that Kazakhstan is officially testing a path between stablecoin-linked tenge and the conversion of real assets into tokens in new urban areas designed for specific legal regimes, but the announcement does not name the token's issuer, does not specify when it will be tested or whether Hadron will actually be used.

The issues to be monitored are how the pilot proposal will identify issuers and asset limits, whether national bank officer training will shift from a record of understanding into an implementation with a timeframe, and how Evo's project with its Alatau Asset Tokenization Plan will go hand-in-hand with national crypto reserves.