Crypto in Kazakhstan: the laws, the taxes, and what's happening now

Kazakhstan is the rare country that became a mining superpower almost by accident, then tried to build a coherent policy around it after the fact. In five years, the country went from cheap coal and a grey zone to two regulators running in parallel, a tax on crypto sale profits, and, as of August 2026, its own sovereign crypto reserve funded by the miners themselves. Here's what actually works, who has actually moved in, and how attractive the country really is for crypto business and relocation.

How Kazakhstan got here

The starting point wasn't crypto, it was a financial center. The Astana International Financial Centre (AIFC) opened in 2018, a jurisdiction inside the country running on its own law, built on English common law, with its own courts and its own regulator, AFSA. Crypto arrived there first: AFSA started licensing exchanges inside the center's perimeter in 2021.

Then China happened. Beijing banned mining outright in 2021, and a wave of hardware flooded into neighboring jurisdictions with cheap power. Kazakhstan became one of the main beneficiaries: within months, the country supplied up to 18% of global Bitcoin hashrate, more than a grid built mostly on coal could handle. Rolling blackouts followed, and the government had to impose limits on miners on the fly, without rules worked out in advance.

The next few years went into turning that accidental mining boom into a system. Parliament amended the digital assets law in January 2026, and the national regime went live on May 1, 2026: the National Bank started licensing and supervising anyone providing digital asset services outside the AIFC perimeter. From that point, the country effectively runs two parallel regulators, AFSA inside the financial center and the National Bank outside it, and where a platform is registered decides its rules, its taxes, and its user protections.

Policy took two more steps forward over the summer of 2026. In July, President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev signed a decree, "On Measures to Stimulate and Develop the Digital Asset Industry," prepared jointly by the Ministry of Artificial Intelligence and Digital Development, the National Bank, and the AIFC. The decree lays out a mechanism for using digital assets and stablecoins in cross-border settlements (stablecoins will only be allowed if fully backed by cash reserves, with issuers required to hold at least 200 million tenge in charter capital), introduces voluntary disclosure for assets previously held on unregulated foreign platforms, and, more relevant to investors, promises to exempt individuals' income from digital asset transactions from personal income tax, provided the transactions run through regulated Kazakhstani infrastructure.

Then on July 18, the government approved Resolution No. 638, effective August 1, 2026: mining data centers of 150 MW or more, running hardware rated at 150 TH/s or higher per unit, must hand over 10% of the coins they mine, after costs, to the state. Those coins go to the National Bank's National Investment Corporation and form a "national strategic crypto reserve," essentially a sovereign fund that works with crypto the way a typical oil fund works with oil.

Who's actually operating in the country

At least eight platforms hold AFSA licenses inside the AIFC, including Binance and Bybit, the two biggest names on the list. Binance applied for participant status at the center back in October 2021, got in-principle approval in August 2022, and received a permanent license that same October. Bybit got a full AFSA license in September 2024 and later launched the country's first regulated P2P crypto trading platform. Alongside them, the AFSA registry lists ATAIX Eurasia, Biteeu, CaspianEx, BigOne, Delta DA, and Xignal&MT, more local and regional players.

Outside the AIFC perimeter, the first company to get a national license under the National Bank's new rules was Pax Finance, licensed in early July 2026, shortly after the regime's May 1 start.

Mining moved faster than regulation did. Kazakh miner Xive (operating since 2018, its founder Didar Bekbau publicly documented the power-limit crisis), international operator Enegix, whose third data center with 50,000+ ASICs went live in June 2021 on Bitmain hardware, and China-listed BIT Mining, which announced $9 million-plus in investment for a 20 MW Kazakhstan facility built from equipment relocated out of Sichuan, all went through the 2021-2023 crackdown on limits and blackouts. Some of these companies haven't publicly reported their current status since 2023-2024, so treat their presence here as a documented launch, not a guarantee they're still running at the same scale, mining regulation has tightened considerably since.

What you pay, and what's off-limits

The tax code that took effect January 1, 2026, wrote separate rules for virtual assets for the first time: an individual pays 10% income tax on the difference between the sale price and a documented purchase price. That's a tax on the gain, not the turnover, which is exactly why your paper trail decides the outcome: without receipts, exchange statements, or bank records proving what you paid, the entire sale price counts as taxable gain. Sell through a licensed platform inside the AIFC and the tax is typically withheld at source; sell elsewhere and you declare it yourself, on the annual income return.

For comparison, South Korea only introduced a similar tax on crypto profits after four years of delays, and the rate there sits noticeably above Kazakhstan's 10%.

Tokayev's July decree promises to go further and exempt income earned through regulated Kazakhstani infrastructure from that tax entirely, but as of this writing that's a stated intention, not a working rule; watch for how it actually lands in the tax code.

Paying for goods and services in crypto stays prohibited, the tenge is the only legal tender in the country. Mining without registration remains a separate offense, and buying hand to hand falls outside the licensed system along with all its protections.

Why the country is so attractive for mining

The answer is coal. Kazakhstan gets roughly 70% of its electricity from coal plants, historically priced around $0.04 per kWh, one of the lowest rates in the world, largely thanks to the Ekibastuz coal basin. That cheapness, not a deliberate strategy, is what pulled miners in during 2021 faster than the state could write rules for them.

The July 2026 decree adds another energy source earmarked specifically for mining: associated petroleum and natural gas at oilfields that isn't needed for state purposes can now be routed into autonomous power generation for crypto mining, a practice familiar from Texas and other oil-producing regions.

A good investment climate, and not just for crypto

The AIFC isn't just a crypto sandbox, it's a full special jurisdiction. Inside it, English common law applies, a separate court modeled on the City of London operates, and tax holidays run through January 1, 2066, on corporate tax, capital gains tax, and dividends, plus a VAT exemption on financial services. It's one of the few jurisdictions in Central Asia where a foreign investor can litigate under law they actually recognize, rather than in local courts.

The wider picture also favors investors. In 2025, the EBRD put roughly $440-450 million into Kazakhstan across 18 projects and extended its cooperation framework through 2030; the World Bank approved a new partnership framework for 2026-2031 aimed at mobilizing private capital. Foreign direct investment grew 88% year over year in 2024, to $15.7 billion, a post-Soviet record, and inflows in the first half of 2026 topped $20 billion, up 9.6%. In the 2026 investment safety rankings, Kazakhstan climbed from 70th to 53rd, the best result in Central Asia.

For anyone considering relocation rather than investment, the country runs separate visa tracks: a digital nomad visa (B9-1, launched March 2025, valid 10 years), a Neo Nomad visa for remote employees of foreign companies (B12-1, since November 2024, one year), and an AIFC investor visa, a $60,000 investment in AIFC/AIX securities buys a five-year visa and tax breaks on foreign-sourced income.

The country where all of this is happening

Kazakhstan's population sits around 20.3-20.6 million. The capital has been Astana since 1997, but Almaty remains the country's financial and cultural center, the city that effectively ran the economy for decades before the capital moved. Kazakh is the state language, Russian holds equal official status for administrative use, and the working language of AIFC courts and documents is English, which removes the language barrier for foreign business operating specifically inside the financial center's perimeter.

Since March 1, 2024, the entire country has run on a single time zone, UTC+5; before that, it was split across two zones, which created confusion for international business. The overlap with European working hours and a convenient window into Asian markets during the same working day make Kazakhstan a logistically convenient spot for platforms serving clients in both regions at once.

It's worth noting the political history separately: in January 2022, the country went through "Qandy Qantar," the largest unrest since independence, with at least 238 confirmed deaths, including 19 security personnel, a state of emergency, and CSTO troops deployed. Afterward, President Tokayev pushed through 56 constitutional amendments limiting presidential power. That's part of the country's history anyone weighing the political risk of a long-term presence here should know, stated without further conclusions, simply as documented fact.

So is Kazakhstan worth it

The strengths add up to a clear picture: one of the lowest tax rates on crypto sale profits among countries where the activity is legal at all; a separate jurisdiction with English law and multi-year tax holidays; cheap energy that the government is now institutionalizing for mining instead of fighting it; a growing stream of foreign direct investment; and working visa programs for remote entrepreneurs.

The weaknesses are just as concrete. Two parallel regulators mean a business has to decide upfront whether it operates inside the AIFC or outside it, and adapt to the corresponding rulebook. The tax break on gains requires a documentation trail that plenty of traders simply don't have. Some of the mining projects that drew attention in 2021 haven't confirmed their status in years, and mining regulation has grown considerably more demanding since, expanding here today means meeting requirements that didn't exist five years ago. And the political history of 2022 is a factor any investor with a decade-long horizon has to weigh for themselves.

For the current status in one place, see our Kazakhstan page in the regulation map, with the date it was last checked.

Nothing here should be taken as financial advice — just information to consider.