Tether has signed a memorandum of understanding with Kazakhstan’s National Bank and the Alatau City Authority to explore a stablecoin linked to the tenge and a framework for putting real-world assets on blockchain networks.
According to Decrypt, the agreement is an initial cooperation plan rather than a binding contract. The parties will study how other countries have developed national-currency stablecoins before preparing a concept and pilot proposal for a tenge-pegged token. The announcement did not identify which organization would issue it.
Two proposed pilots
The second part of the memorandum concerns tokenization: recording ownership of assets such as property or bonds as digital tokens on a blockchain. The parties plan to select priority asset categories, create a model and launch a pilot in Alatau City. The project could use Hadron, Tether’s tokenization platform launched in November 2024, although no final technology choice was announced.
The memorandum does not set a launch date for either pilot. It also calls for workshops for central-bank employees covering token issuance, reserve management and asset tokenization.
Alatau is a planned smart city in Kazakhstan’s Almaty region. It is being developed from the ground up with its own legal regime and is intended to become a financial-technology center for Central Asia. The $7.2 billion project is planned to expand from 52,000 residents to two million. President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev has said he wants residents to be able to use cryptocurrency for goods and services there.
Kazakhstan’s wider digital-asset plans
The proposed Tether partnership builds on other digital-asset initiatives in Kazakhstan. In March, the National Bank earmarked as much as $350 million for crypto-related investments from nearly $70 billion in gold and foreign-exchange reserves. Those investments may include shares in crypto-linked companies and index funds rather than direct purchases of digital coins.
Officials said in September that the country’s national crypto reserve had reached $700 million, with approximately $200 million invested so far, mostly through hedge funds—private investment pools that trade on behalf of large investors.
Kazakhstan already has a tenge stablecoin test known as Evo. Launched in September 2025 within the central bank’s regulatory sandbox, it was issued by the exchange Intebix and Eurasian Bank with assistance from Solana and Mastercard. The central bank supervises the rules of that test but does not issue the token.
The National Bank also has a separate plan to tokenize two properties in Alatau, valued at up to $50 million and $10 million. That work is scheduled to use Kazakhstan Stock Exchange infrastructure by the end of 2026.
Market picture
Moneyiar data at 9:24 a.m. on October 8, 2026, showed Ethereum at $2,560.89, down 1.67% over 24 hours and 4.80% over seven days. Tether USDt was $0.99933, down 0.04% over 24 hours and 0.01% over seven days.
The agreement comes days after a Senate subcommittee report concerning Iran-linked use of USDT and a lawsuit involving the freezing of $2.76 million in Tether-linked funds. Those developments form part of the backdrop as Tether expands its cooperation with public institutions, but the memorandum itself only sets out areas for exploration and pilot preparation.
