Kazakhstan’s regulated crypto market shoots past $10B after 30X growth in three years

The size of Kazakhstan’s cryptocurrency market has increased more than 30 times over the past three years since the country started regulating it.

Three crypto platforms have been licensed under its recently updated legislation, with another five awaiting authorizations, officials in Astana announced.

Kazakhstan sees massive increase in regulated crypto transactions

The authorities in Kazakhstan have registered a significant growth in the domestic market for cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin.

The transaction volume, which stood at $320 million in 2023, reached $10.5 billion by the end of 2025 and has increased even further this year.

That’s according to the latest statistical data presented by Yerkegali Yedenbayev, managing director of the Astana Financial Services Authority (AFSA).

The latter is the supervisory body responsible for overseeing the Astana International Financial Centre (AIFC) – the fintech hub in the capital city where it all started.

Reporting on the developments in the regulated crypto space over the past few years during a government meeting on Tuesday, Yedenbayev further detailed:

“In the first half of 2026, the transaction volume reached $5.5 billion. Thus, the regulated market has grown more than 30-fold in a short period.”

At the same time, the customer base has also expanded notably. The number of clients in the sector rose from 53,000 in 2023 to 270,000 as of today, he added.

In a report quoting the AFSA executive, the Zakon.kz portal recalled his earlier remarks that Kazakhstanis account for approximately 1 million cryptocurrency wallets worldwide.

Astana has been trying to bring some of that decentralized money back to the country. Private crypto owners were recently granted a generous tax exemption.

In August, President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev signed the respective decree prepared with the participation of the AIFC, the digital ministry and the central bank.

As already reported by Cryptopolitan, the document relieved digital-asset investors from personal income taxation of gains generated as a result of coin-related transactions.

The move aims to encourage these citizens to transfer the bulk of their holdings from foreign-based trading venues to regulated domestic exchanges.

Kazakhstan-licensed cryptocurrency platforms increased too

Kazakhstan became a recognizable name in the crypto world when it climbed to the top-three mining destinations after China enforced a ban on the activity in 2021.

The influx of miners caused energy deficits in parts of the country, but it managed to deal with the issue by cracking down on illegal Bitcoin farms and restricting power consumption.

In an attempt to tap into the profits of the expanding industry, the Kazakh government set out to regulate the exchange of minted coins, permitting trading through AIFC-registered providers.

The Central Asian nation adopted its law “On Digital Assets” in 2023. The legislation was revised this past spring to allow service providers to work outside the narrow legal regime of the fintech hub.

Three crypto exchange operators have since been licensed, the Chairman of the National Bank of Kazakhstan (NBK) Timur Suleimenov announced at the same meeting with the executive power.

Another five companies are currently in the process of obtaining their licenses, the governor added, after AFSA’s chief indicated these are international platforms preparing to enter the local market.

The news comes after Binance chose Kazakhstan to establish a dedicated hub for international settlements and money transfers that will serve the whole region.

The center is expected to process cross-border transactions for customers in the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), covering most of the post-Soviet space, and markets in Eastern Europe.

The strategic decision of the world’s largest coin trading platform will certainly help Kazakhstan in fulfilling its ambition to become a true Eurasian cryptocurrency hub.

Quoted by the Vlast.kz website, the NBK Chair highlighted that the country has implemented the region’s first comprehensive regulatory framework for the crypto market.

He also noted that the monetary authority has designated the Kazakhstan Stock Exchange (KASE) as a digital-asset operator to develop the necessary infrastructure.

Its platform has been used to conclude 34,000 deals worth 20.5 billion tenge ($45 million) for exchange-traded funds tracking BTC and execute 650 trades totaling 1 billion tenge for other crypto ETFs.

And the three currently active exchanges have a combined turnover reaching approximately 2 billion tenge (almost $4.5 million) from the first two months of licensed operations, Suleimenov stressed.

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