On November 9, the National Bank of Kazakhstan is holding an auction on the Kazakhstan Stock Exchange (KASE) to place short-term notes worth 50 billion tenge. For the first time, securities of a single issue will be offered to investors simultaneously in two formats – traditional and tokenized, economist Eldar Shamsutdinov notes. The circulation period of the notes will be 91 days. This was reported by Qazaqyia.kz citing Kursiv Media.
According to a KASE statement, these are discount notes with a nominal value of 100 tenge per security. The circulation start date is November 11, 2026, and redemption will begin on February 10, 2027.
The auction will take place from 09:00 to 11:30 Astana time. Investors will submit bids indicating a price calculated with a discount to the nominal value. The minimum bid for the purchase of traditional notes is one security, for tokenized ones – 50,000 securities.
Traditional notes will be issued with rights recorded in the Central Securities Depository. Tokenized securities will be placed in digital form on KASE's digital financial assets platform. Rights to them will be recorded in the exchange's system with reflection in the register of holders of securities and digital financial assets.
Clearing and settlements for transactions with tokenized notes will be provided by the KASE Clearing Center.
Economist Shamsutdinov called the placement an important step for the development of the digital capital market in Kazakhstan. In his opinion, the emergence of tokenized government securities could in the future simplify the digital circulation of not only government but also corporate bonds.
The expert also noted that the National Bank had already experimented with digital debt instruments. In 2018, the regulator launched the Invest Online blockchain platform, through which the public could directly buy short-term notes without the participation of banks and brokers.
Buyers transferred money for the securities directly to the National Bank. The regulator withdrew these funds from circulation and, upon redemption, returned the nominal value of the notes.
"Such a mechanism allowed sterilizing tenge liquidity directly from the public, bypassing traditional banking intermediation," Shamsutdinov noted.
The current auction continues experiments with digital financial instruments, but now the emphasis is on market infrastructure.
"In the future, such infrastructure could be used for the issuance, circulation and settlement of government and corporate bonds," the expert emphasizes.
Earlier, Kursiv wrote that inspections had begun in 11 major banks of Kazakhstan.