National Bank of Kazakhstan Considers Creating a Stablecoin
Date: 2025-01-31 Author: Henry Casey Categories: IN WORLD
At a press conference in the Senate, Sholpankulov said that the National Bank is actively studying global experience and developing an initial vision for the project. Currently, the regulator is interacting with market participants and collecting proposals to launch the initiative. According to him, the project will be adapted within the framework of the "regulatory sandbox", which will allow participants to test digital financial assets without registering on the exchange or obtaining a license. After this, legal changes are planned, and the bill will be submitted in August 2025.
The regulatory sandbox, as Sholpankulov emphasized, does not assume that digital assets will become a means of payment. This will be an opportunity to buy and sell assets without participating in the exchange, and first of all, such assets will be used to create new projects in the domestic market of Kazakhstan.
In his recent statement, Kazakhstan President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev emphasized the importance of creating an infrastructure for the legal circulation of digital assets, including cryptocurrencies. Currently, digital assets in Kazakhstan can only be exchanged through licensed crypto exchanges operating within the Astana International Financial Center (AIFC). However, the number of such exchanges is limited - there are only ten of them, including Bybit and Binance Kazakhstan.
Tokayev noted that the current system covers only a small part of the market, which creates the need to expand the legal framework to attract more users to official platforms. In 2024, 19 illegal cryptocurrency exchangers with a total turnover of $60 million were closed in Kazakhstan. To combat the illegal circulation of digital assets, special units were created, and the practice of seizing cryptocurrency during investigations was introduced.
Thus, Kazakhstan seeks to provide wider access to digital assets and create conditions for the development of new financial technologies, which should attract additional investment and strengthen the national economy.
