Kyrgyzstan Launches World’s First State-Issued, Gold-Backed Stablecoin USDKG

Kyrgyzstan has officially launched USDKG, the world’s first government-issued stablecoin fully backed by physical gold, according to the country’s Ministry of Finance.

The stablecoin, registered by the State Service for Regulation and Supervision of the Financial Market, is pegged to the U.S. dollar at 1 USDKG = 1 USD. Officials say every token is secured by gold under state control, combining the reliability of a traditional reserve asset with blockchain transparency.

The first issuance and listings on centralized and decentralized exchanges are expected in the coming days. Authorities describe the project as part of a national pilot aimed at advancing Kyrgyzstan’s digital economy and strengthening financial sovereignty.

USDKG is separate from the country’s other digital finance initiatives, including the proposed KGST national stablecoin and the digital sum, which remain under review by the National Council for Virtual Assets and Blockchain Technologies.

The launch comes as Central Asia accelerates experiments with asset-backed digital currencies, following Kazakhstan’s recent rollout of a tenge-backed stablecoin in its regulatory sandbox.

Kursiv Uzbekistan also reports that Visa and Mastercard have agreed to a revised $38 bn settlement in an effort to resolve a 20-year legal dispute in which US merchants accused them and several banks of inflating the cost of card payments.