Overview
- The government formalized the strategic digital mining program in Government Resolution No. 638 on Saturday, July 18, creating a legal mechanism for a state-managed crypto reserve.
- Under the rules, large qualifying miners must transfer a share of monthly mined digital assets after electricity and grid costs to wallets run by the Astana Hub, which will hand the coins to the National Investment Corporation for reserve management.
- The program links electricity access to compliance by offering capped 10-year power contracts to approved miners and names Ekibastuz GRES-1 as the first 300 MW supplier while setting technical thresholds such as 150 MW data centers and rigs clearing 150 TH/s.
- A July 7 presidential decree complements the mining rules by creating a Committee on Digital Assets, pushing tokenization, custody and stablecoin work, and offering tax incentives and disclosure windows to draw crypto activity into regulated Kazakh infrastructure.
- Observers say the key things to watch are miners' responses — compliance, relocation, or operational changes — how listed power producers implement quotas and the National Bank’s investment arm operationalizes custody and investment of the reserve, along with potential effects on global mining distribution and local energy and emissions pressure.