1. Coinbase Kazakhstan injunction: what the regulator announced
The Astana Financial Services Authority (AFSA), regulator of Kazakhstan's Astana International Financial Centre (AIFC), said on October 20, 2026 that it won court injunctions against six crypto platforms, including Coinbase and HTX, and will serve them on Apple and Google to restrict access to the platforms' mobile apps.
The six platforms named in the orders are BingX, Bitcoin.com, HTX, BitMart, Coinbase and WEEX. According to the regulator, the injunctions prohibit their operators from providing, offering or marketing digital asset services in the AIFC, or to users located there, without authorization. They also prohibit the distribution of mobile applications for those purposes. That last element is what connects the dispute to the app stores, since an exchange's app on an iPhone or an Android handset is typically delivered through Apple's App Store or Google Play.
AFSA Chief Executive Evgeniya Bogdanova said the court orders will be sent to the operators of Google Play and the Apple App Store so that access to the services can be limited. The regulator did not say whether the orders had already been delivered to either company, which leaves open when, or whether, the apps in question could disappear from storefronts serving users in Astana.
2. How did the case against the six platforms unfold?
The procedural record begins in the autumn. The AIFC Court entered a default judgment on September 15, after the operators of the platforms failed to file an acknowledgment of service or a defense. In common-law proceedings, a default judgment is what a court issues when a defendant has been properly notified of a claim but does not respond; the court can then grant the relief sought without hearing a contested argument. The AIFC operates its own court system based on English common law, which explains the vocabulary and the presence of a judge with the title Sir Stephen Richards on the case.
A separate order followed on September 18. It removed a seventh platform, LBank, from the proceedings. AFSA explained that LBank's operator had blocked access to its service in Kazakhstan, which removed the reason for continued legal action against it. The episode shows how the regulator frames success: the goal is less to collect a penalty than to see unlicensed services stop reaching people within its jurisdiction.
The regulator announced the final orders against the remaining six on October 20. Because the operators did not take part in the case, the injunctions stand as the court's operative position, and the regulator is now looking for practical ways to make them effective against companies that, in its view, are ignoring the rules of the financial center.
3. Why did the court decline to order Apple and Google directly?
AFSA had asked the court for a separate order that would bind Apple and Google themselves. Justice Sir Stephen Richards declined that request for the moment, while leaving the door open for the regulator to return to the court later. In his reasoning, he wrote that the sensible course in the first instance is for the claimant to enter into dialogue with Google LLC and Apple Inc. about the steps that would be needed.
The practical effect of the ruling is to shift the sequence of events rather than to close the matter. According to the regulator, Apple and Google become bound by the injunctions once they are served with notice of them. After acknowledging service, either company may apply to vary or set aside the orders. In other words, the two firms are not being treated as defendants who must be heard before anything happens; they are being told that orders exist and invited, in effect, to comply or to object through the court.
For a regulator, the distinction matters. A direct order against a platform operator is difficult to enforce when that operator is based abroad and has chosen not to appear. An app store, by contrast, is a gatekeeper with a commercial presence in many countries and an established process for handling legal notices. Asking the gatekeeper to act is a way of reaching the service without having to reach the company behind it. The judge's insistence on dialogue first suggests that the court wants to see whether cooperation is possible before it considers compelling it.
There is also a question of precedent. If the two companies were ordered directly and without notice, they would have little chance to explain what is technically feasible, such as whether an app can be withheld from users in one district but not another. A court that first encourages a conversation can learn those details and write any later order accordingly. That approach tends to produce orders that are narrower, more specific and easier to carry out, which benefits the regulator as much as the companies receiving them.
4. Why do the orders cover only the AIFC?
The judge limited the injunctions to the AIFC and did not extend them across all of Kazakhstan. He pointed to amendments to the country's digital assets law that took effect on May 1, 2026, which gave the National Bank of Kazakhstan the broader role in licensing crypto activity. The AIFC is a special jurisdiction within Astana with its own regulator and courts, so the authority of its court reaches the financial center and the people located in it, not the whole national market.
That territorial boundary has consequences for how the orders will work in practice. A user in Astana's financial center and a user elsewhere in Kazakhstan may be subject to different regulatory arrangements, even though both may be using the same app. Any step taken by Apple or Google to comply would therefore have to be limited to the area covered by the court's orders, which is the kind of narrowly drawn request that app store operators generally find easier to evaluate than a nationwide demand.
The division of labor also signals where the main licensing decisions now sit. With the National Bank holding the broader licensing role since May, AFSA's court actions are best read as enforcement of the financial center's own rules inside its own perimeter, not as a competing national crypto policy.
For users, the change would be felt at the level of the device. Someone in the financial center who already has an exchange app installed would not necessarily lose it, but new downloads and updates could be affected if the stores act. The regulator has not described such details, and the orders as reported concern the operators' conduct and the distribution of their apps rather than any obligation on individual users.
5. Nine platforms pulled their apps, according to the regulator
Bogdanova described the broader enforcement campaign in numbers. AFSA warned more than 20 platforms during 2025 and went to court in early 2026. After that step, nine platforms limited access to their apps in Kazakhstan, and AFSA dropped its cases against them. Seven other platforms, she said, plan to apply for an AFSA license. Taken together, the figures present the litigation as a lever that has already moved a number of companies either out of the market or toward the licensing process.
The court record gives a slightly different count for the operators the regulator dropped from the proceedings: 12, compared with the nine cited by Bogdanova. The discrepancy is not explained in the available material, and it is not clear whether the two figures measure the same group in different ways, for example by counting platforms versus operators, or reflect separate stages of the case. Readers should treat the nine as the regulator's own description and the 12 as the number appearing in the court file.
What both figures have in common is the direction of travel. A meaningful share of the platforms first warned in 2025 have either withdrawn their apps or are preparing to seek authorization, while six remaining operators, including some of the best-known names in the sector, have so far neither responded in court nor, according to the regulator, obtained permission to serve users in the AIFC.
The numbers also show why the regulator has chosen an escalating approach. Warnings came first, then lawsuits, then default judgments, and now service on the app store operators. Each stage widens the set of parties that can be asked to help, and each one has produced some visible change in behavior among platforms that wish to keep access to the market. The six remaining operators are the ones that have not changed course so far, which is why they have become the subject of the app store step.
6. What happens next
The next step is service. AFSA says it will serve the injunctions on Apple and Google, and the legal clock for any challenge starts from that point: once the companies are on notice and have acknowledged service, they may seek to vary or set aside the orders. Whether they cooperate, object or simply continue to operate under their own policies will determine if the regulator needs to go back to the AIFC Court, which the judge expressly left open to it.
For the six platforms, the outcome depends on whether they engage. The operators have not participated in the proceedings so far, and the orders remain in force. A decision by any of them to restrict access in the financial center, as nine other platforms are described as having done, would reduce the need for enforcement through the app stores. A decision to apply for an AFSA license, as seven others are said to be planning, would open a different path.
The episode is also a test of a broader regulatory idea: that the distribution layer of the mobile ecosystem can serve as a point of enforcement for financial services rules. No date has been given for the delivery of the orders or for any reply from the two companies, so the regulator's next public statement, or the next filing in the AIFC Court, is the signal to watch.