Tether, the issuer of the USDT stablecoin, has signed a memorandum of understanding with the National Bank of Kazakhstan — the country's central bank — and the Alatau City Authority to explore a stablecoin linked to the Kazakh tenge, the country's national currency. The agreement also covers real-world asset tokenization and decentralized finance.

The memorandum does not launch a new stablecoin. Instead, the parties will study international issuance models, identify potential use cases, and prepare a concept for a possible tenge-backed pilot. No issuer, blockchain, reserve structure, or launch date has been named.

The move brings Tether into Kazakhstan's broader effort to build regulated digital-asset infrastructure. In May 2026, the country introduced a comprehensive digital-asset framework that recognizes money-backed stablecoins and tokenized real-world assets within its regulatory system.

Stablecoin Pilot Takes Shape

The planned project would examine how a digital token could track the value of the tenge, a different design from the dollar-pegged USDT. Tether and the National Bank will also study reserve management and stablecoin issuance practices used in other markets.

Kazakhstan has prior experience in this area. In September 2025, the National Bank launched a sandbox pilot for a tenge-denominated stablecoin involving Intebix, Solana, Mastercard, and Eurasian Bank. The new Tether initiative therefore represents an additional model rather than the country's first experiment with a tenge stablecoin.

Tokenization Adds a Second Track

The memorandum also calls for an asset-tokenization framework. The parties will identify priority asset categories and design a model for converting real-world assets into blockchain-based tokens.

A pilot could take place in Alatau, with Tether's Hadron tokenization platform identified as a potential technology. The parties also plan workshops covering stablecoin markets, issuance, reserve management, and distributed-ledger technology.

For Kazakhstan, the partnership reflects a wider push to develop digital financial infrastructure under regulatory oversight. For Tether, it expands the company's work beyond USDT into tokenization and country-level financial infrastructure.\nThe next stage will depend on the proposed pilot and regulatory review. Until those steps are completed, the agreement remains an exploratory framework rather than a confirmed tenge stablecoin launch.

Primary source: CoinDesk