Kyrgyzstan winds down gold-backed USDKG and state exchange

Kyrgyzstan is shutting down two pillars of its state-backed crypto push less than a year after launching them. On Aug. 20 the Cabinet of Ministers issued Order No. 639-t, which mandates the liquidation of OJSC EVA, the issuer of the gold-backed USDKG stablecoin, and OJSC Coin Nomad Exchange, the country's first state-owned digital-asset venue. Crypto Briefing reported the order on Oct. 11, days after local outlet Akchabar traced the paperwork.

USDKG launched in November 2025 as a gold-backed token pegged one-to-one to the dollar. The issuer, then called OJSC Issuer of Virtual Assets, was state-owned with the Ministry of Finance as sole founder. The registered issue ran to 50,140,738 tokens at $1 each, worth more than $50.1 million or about 4.38 billion soms, and the state duty for registering the issue alone came to 438,500 soms, Akchabar reported.

USDKG was meant to support cross-border payments and raise Kyrgyzstan's profile in digital finance. A state-linked, gold-backed stablecoin paired with a state-owned exchange put both an asset and a venue under government ownership. The project did not reach its first anniversary, ending a government-backed digital-finance push launched less than a year earlier.

The project then ran into sanctions. On May 26, 2026 Britain designated the issuer under its Russia-related sanctions over suspected economic ties with Moscow, and two days later the company re-registered as OJSC EVA. The name shortened but the legal entity stayed the same, with no official comment on whether the renaming was connected to the designation. TokenPost reported the first issuance began Nov. 20, 2025 with 50 million tokens tracking the dollar, backed by project materials describing 30 gold bars of about 376 kilograms inspected at roughly $50.3 million. The British notice named USDKG and USDKG.com as variations of the issuer and alleged it supported or benefited Russia's government, though it names neither EVA nor Coin Nomad Exchange and does not establish that the designation caused the liquidation. The UK measures set off operational problems and a restructuring of the linked companies that has now ended in liquidation orders for both the issuer and the exchange. The sequence runs compact: launch in November 2025, sanctions on the original issuer in May 2026, the cabinet order in August, and the Coin Nomad shareholder vote in early September. The order itself does not name the token; it instructs the Finance Ministry to wind up EVA and Coin Nomad Exchange in order to improve how the state manages its assets.

Coin Nomad moved first. Its sole shareholder, the Finance Ministry, approved voluntary liquidation on Sept. 3, and creditors have around Oct. 14 to file claims. The cabinet order takes in both companies at once, removing the token issuer and a piece of domestic trading infrastructure together.

For holders the position is uncertain. About 50 million USDKG tokens were listed as circulating when the liquidation surfaced, and the token still traded near $1 on some venues. Kreston Global verified reserves of about 376 kilograms of gold, worth roughly $50.3 million, at the project's start. That check dates to the beginning, with no fresher confirmation of what backs the outstanding tokens.

The project's own notice tells holders to email hello@usdkg.com to swap tokens for fiat money or USDT, and cites Order No. 639-t as the basis for ending operations on blockchain networks. Neither the notice nor the reporting around it specifies a redemption deadline, a detailed verification procedure or how payouts will be calculated. The registered $50.1 million issue does not necessarily equal the tokens sitting with investors, so the total to be returned is unknown. The Coin Nomad creditor window closes around Oct. 14, while EVA has given no final date for redemptions.