Kazakhstan crypto regulation: mining legal, payments still banned

In late 2021 Kazakhstan produced 18% of the world's bitcoin hashrate. Buy a coffee there with that bitcoin today and you break the law. The country welcomed the miners and licensed them, and it still refuses to let anyone pay with the coins they mine. That gap sits at the centre of Kazakhstan crypto regulation, and it is why our map files the country under restricted rather than legal. We refreshed the country card this week.

Kazakhstan crypto regulation in one card

Status: restricted. Two regulators share the job, the National Bank for everything outside the Astana International Financial Centre and AFSA inside it. Mining is legal and licensed. Crypto is not legal tender, and paying with it stays prohibited.

The rules changed on 1 May

A full framework for digital assets took effect that day. The National Bank now splits the market in two: unbacked cryptoassets on one side, digital financial assets on the other, the second group covering money-backed stablecoins, tokenised real assets and digital forms of ordinary financial instruments. Exchange operators outside the AIFC apply to the regulator for a licence, which ends the arrangement where the AIFC was the only door into legal trading.

The state buys too. The central bank has set aside up to $350 million from its gold and foreign exchange reserves for a crypto-linked portfolio, run by the National Investment Corporation, with a similar sum planned from the National Fund.

“Crypto reserves and digital assets are no longer seen as something marginal or limited to high-risk investors.”

— Timur Suleimenov, Governor of the National Bank of Kazakhstan, Astana Times, 11 March 2026

Quote source: Astana Times, 11 March 2026

The tax window shuts on 31 December

Since 1 January an individual pays 10% on the gain between the sale price and a documented purchase price.

In July President Tokayev signed a decree that suspends it. Declare your holdings, move them to a licensed Kazakh platform before the end of the year, and you owe nothing on crypto income for the next three tax years.

Kazakhstan counted roughly a million crypto wallets in March. Fewer than 257,000 of those users had registered on an authorised local exchange, and the amnesty exists to close that distance while showing up voluntarily is still the cheap option.

Reading the map

The map covers 46 countries. Each card gives you the status, the regulator by name, a tax note and the date we last checked it, because a regulation page without a date is a guess. Editors change those cards straight in the admin panel, so the checked date moves on the day the rule moves, not on the day of the next release.

• legal: 25 countries
• restricted: 13
• banned: 7
• unclear: 1, Saudi Arabia

Kazakhstan makes the case for that date stamp. Anything written about the country before May describes a place where legal trading happened inside one financial zone, and that stopped being true four months ago. You can walk the rest of the regulation map the same way.

The date to watch is 1 January. That is when the declaration window closes and the National Bank finds out how many of that million wallets registered.

Nothing here should be taken as financial advice; treat it as information to consider.