From CoinDesk · By Krisztian Sandor
Kazakhstan's central bank signed an agreement with Tether to explore a stablecoin pegged to the local currency and potential use cases for digital money.
The parties will also develop a framework for tokenizing real-world assets, with a pilot planned under Alatau City's special legal regime.
Tether's Hadron tokenization platform could be used in the project, though the agreement does not commit Kazakhstan to issuing a stablecoin or adopting the technology.
Kazakhstan's central bank is teaming up with stablecoin giant Tether to explore issuing a digital token tied to the country's currency and putting real-world assets on blockchain rails.
The National Bank of Kazakhstan (NBK), Tether and the Alatau City Authority signed a memorandum of understanding to study stablecoins, asset tokenization and decentralized finance, the parties said Wednesday in a press release.
One focus will be a potential stablecoin pegged to the Kazakhstani tenge. The group plans to study how similar tokens work elsewhere, identify possible uses and prepare a proposal for a pilot. The agreement is exploratory and does not amount to a decision to issue the stablecoin.
The partnership also puts tokenization on the agenda. Tokenization creates blockchain-based representations of assets, potentially allowing anything from bonds to real estate to be transferred, traded or used as collateral through digital networks. The parties will identify which types of assets could be suitable and plan a pilot in Alatau, a city operating under a special legal regime designed in part to encourage financial technology.
Tether's Hadron platform, which provides infrastructure for issuing and managing tokenized assets, is one technology being considered for the project.
Tether is best known as the issuer of USDT, the world's largest U.S. dollar stablecoin with about $140 billion in circulation. It also issues XAUT, a roughly $3.3 billion tokenized gold product backed by physical bullion held in Swiss vaults.
The company has been expanding well beyond stablecoins, investing across energy, payments, commodities and tokenization infrastructure as it looks to build a broader financial and digital-asset business.
Kazakhstan has been building out its digital-asset framework while keeping its central bank closely involved in the process.
“As part of piloting tokenization projects, we intend to thoroughly study international best practices in stablecoin issuance and real-world asset tokenization,” NBK Deputy Governor Binur Zhalenov said.
Tether and the Kazakh authorities will also run workshops on stablecoin reserves, issuance and tokenization for central bank staff and other government agencies.