Uzbekistan now has a dedicated regime for stable tokens. NAPP and the Central Bank approved a framework for testing fiat-backed tokens, payment use cases, and international settlements in a controlled environment.

The main signal is the perimeter: a stable token in Uzbekistan is being placed inside a payments-style regime with a Central Bank reserve account, NAPP participant registration, and Central Bank coordination on financial stability, cybersecurity, and issuance volume.

What happened

On 15 April 2026, the National Agency for Perspective Projects said it had approved, jointly with the Central Bank of Uzbekistan, a regulation for a special legal regime governing stable-token circulation.

The regime covers participant registration, activity monitoring, loss of participant status, and an open participant register. It allows pilots in four areas:

  • issuing stable tokens backed by national and/or foreign currency;
  • using stable tokens as a means of payment in Uzbekistan;
  • using stable tokens for international transfers and settlements;
  • building payment systems based on distributed-ledger technology.

NAPP also names the prohibited designs. The regime excludes algorithmic stable tokens, stable tokens with anonymity functions, and stable tokens backed by crypto-assets.

Issuance is allowed only with full money backing in national and/or foreign currency. Those funds must be reserved in a separate account at the Central Bank. Participants must also implement information-security systems, appoint a responsible person, approve internal rules, and maintain the operational resilience of the issuer ecosystem.

NAPP registers regime participants. Several matters, including financial stability, cybersecurity, and issuance volume, require mandatory coordination with the Central Bank. Pilots start with a 12-month term and can be extended, with a total cap of three years.

How we read this: a stable-token sandbox with a central-bank reserve account

We read this as a regulated sandbox for payment tokens. The construction starts with reserve location, participant registration, and risk coordination.

Four elements matter.

  • Reserve account at the Central Bank. Backing moves from issuer promise to supervised infrastructure. For a token holder, this can become more meaningful than a generic 100% backing statement on an issuer website.
  • NAPP as regime registrar. The agency remains the entry point for the crypto-asset perimeter and maintains the participant register.
  • Central Bank coordination on financial parameters. Issuance volume, financial stability, and cybersecurity require a separate central-bank layer.
  • Bans on algorithmic, anonymous, and crypto-backed designs. Uzbekistan excludes the riskiest stablecoin design families before pilots begin.

In our experience, this kind of regime does two things at once. It gives the regulator a controlled experiment for DLT-based payments, and it prevents open-ended private stablecoin issuance. The practical test will be redemption: how quickly a holder can move back into fiat, through whom, under what limits, and with what disclosure.

What this changes for the region

For Uzbekistan, this is a move toward its own stable-token perimeter. The regional map already has two visible models: Kyrgyzstan’s USDKG as a state-issued gold-backed stablecoin, and Georgia’s GEL₮, where a private issuer operates under a state framework. Uzbekistan is choosing a third route: a regulator-led regime for fiat-backed payment tokens with reserves held through the Central Bank.

For issuers, market entry will run through a pilot, a register, a reserve account, and coordination with two institutions. That slows launch velocity, but it increases the chance that a successful pilot can later become part of payment infrastructure.

For banks and payment companies, the regime may be more relevant than it is for pure crypto-native teams. The permitted use cases are written in the language of payments, transfers, and settlement. Token design will need to answer banking questions: reserves, redemption, cybersecurity, issuance limits, and operational resilience.

What we will watch next

The concrete monitoring signals:

  • who becomes the first participant in the special-regime register;
  • which reserve currency is used: Uzbek som, dollars, euros, or a mixed basket;
  • whether public redemption rules appear for token holders;
  • whether the regime is used by banks, payment companies, or crypto-asset providers;
  • how the Central Bank limits issuance volume;
  • whether the framework produces recurring reserve and cybersecurity reporting.

If the regime becomes active, Uzbekistan may become the first Central Asian jurisdiction where stable-token pilots are built directly into a NAPP plus Central Bank structure. The focus moves from crypto exchanges and isolated experimental tokens toward a tokenized-payments perimeter.

Silk DeFi is a research project on crypto, DeFi, and regulation across Eurasia.

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