Tether and Kazakhstan sign MoU to study tenge stablecoin pilot

What happened

Tether said on Oct. 7 that it signed a memorandum of understanding with the National Bank of Kazakhstan and the Alatau City Authority. The deal covers stablecoins, asset tokenization and decentralized finance.

Under the agreement, the two sides will draw up a concept and a pilot proposal for a token tied to Kazakhstan's national currency. They will also look at how other markets issue stablecoins and find possible uses inside Kazakhstan.

Alatau City is a possible host for an asset tokenization pilot. The parties may use Hadron, Tether's platform for issuing and managing tokenized assets, and they plan to pick asset categories suited to digital issuance. No launch date or asset class has been chosen.

The agreement also covers workshops and training on stablecoins, digital assets and tokenization.

Why it matters

Kazakhstan already regulates this type of product. Its National Bank brought in wide-ranging digital asset rules on May 1, 2026, and those rules treat money-backed stablecoins, tokenized real assets and digital versions of traditional financial instruments as digital financial assets.

Stablecoins are already being tested in the country. The National Bank ran its first tenge-denominated stablecoin pilot in September 2025 through its regulatory sandbox, and Intebix issued that token with Solana, Mastercard and Eurasian Bank. The token is known as Evo, or KZTE, and runs on Solana.

For now, the Tether agreement is exploratory. The memorandum does not mean a new stablecoin has been approved or launched, so the plan is best read as preparatory work rather than a live product.

What is still unclear

• It is not clear whether the proposed pilot would replace, expand or run separately from Kazakhstan's earlier tenge stablecoin project.
• Tether and Kazakh authorities have not announced an issuance date, a blockchain, a reserve structure or a commercial issuer for the proposed token.

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