Illustration: AI
Kazakhstan’s National Bank is holding an auction on KASE on November 9 to sell 50 billion tenge in short-term notes. Notes from the same issue will be offered in standard and tokenized formats, with a term of 91 days (kursiv.media). The minimum bids and the systems used to record ownership will differ between the two formats.
What happened
The National Bank is offering discount notes on the Kazakhstan Stock Exchange, or KASE. These are short-term debt securities that investors buy at a discount to face value. Each note has a face value of 100 tenge.
Bids will be accepted on November 9 from 09:00 to 11:30 Astana time. Investors specify a price that reflects a discount to face value. The notes will enter circulation on November 11, 2026, with redemption starting on February 10, 2027.
What this means
Here’s an important detail for buyers: the minimum bid depends on the format. For standard notes, a bid for a single note is enough; for tokenized notes, the minimum is 50 thousand notes. That makes the entry requirements for the two formats of the same issue quite different.
The tokenized notes will be issued digitally on KASE’s digital financial assets platform. Ownership of standard notes will be recorded at the Central Securities Depository. For digital notes, records will be kept in the exchange’s system and reflected in the register of holders.
What the digital platform is for
The KASE Clearing Centre will handle settlement for trades in tokenized notes. Economist Eldar Shamsutdinov sees the offering as an important step for Kazakhstan’s digital capital market. He believes the infrastructure could also be used for corporate bonds in the future.
“In the future, this infrastructure could be used to issue, trade and settle government and corporate bonds,” Shamsutdinov says.
How the National Bank previously sold notes through blockchain
In 2018, the National Bank launched the Invest Online blockchain platform. It allowed residents to buy short-term notes directly, without banks or brokers. Buyers transferred money to the National Bank and received the face value of the notes at redemption.
The regulator withdrew the funds it received from circulation. The current offering continues its experiments with digital debt instruments, now through KASE’s infrastructure.
