Iran's central bank has loosened its currency controls, according to a report by the Financial Times. As a result, Iran now tolerates cryptocurrencies in export payments. Exporters mainly use USDT, the US dollar pegged stablecoin issued by Tether.
A stablecoin is a token whose value tracks a reference currency, in the case of USDT the dollar. Holders therefore gain dollar exposure without a dollar bank account, usually via the Tron network and its low transaction fees. Iranian exporters normally have to repatriate their foreign earnings through state-monitored channels. Rates there often sit below the free market. The crypto route bypasses that obligation. However, reliance on cryptocurrencies in Iran's foreign trade is not new. Elliptic estimated the Iranian share of global Bitcoin mining at around 4.5% back in 2021. Notably, TRM Labs put the crypto volume attributed to Iran in 2025 at roughly USD 9.9 billion. By contrast, the figure stood at USD 11.4 billion a year earlier. Four exchanges now sanctioned by the United States handled 78% of it.
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Exporters bypass Iran's exchange rate controls with crypto export payments
The Islamic Republic's currency rules oblige exporters to repatriate their foreign earnings. Conversion runs through state-monitored channels, at rates that can sit well below the free market rate. For companies, therefore, this amounts to a discount on every shipment. The gap between the official and the free rate determines how large that discount turns out to be. Anyone who accepts payment in USDT instead sells it through a domestic crypto exchange or swaps it on open markets. As a result, dependence on the official rate falls.
Formally, however, nothing has changed. The report describes a shift in enforcement practice, not a published law and not a formal directive from the central bank. No public document identifies cryptocurrencies as an authorized settlement method for exporters. Moreover, the central bank did not respond to a request from the Financial Times. Exporters therefore operate in a tolerated gray zone. The central bank could withdraw that tolerance without any formal act.
US sanctions hit Iran's largest crypto exchanges
In June 2026, the US Treasury designated four Iranian trading venues: Nobitex, Wallex, Bitpin and Ramzinex. The measure rests on Executive Orders 13224 and 13902, according to the Treasury statement. As justification, the Treasury cites terrorism financing and sanctions evasion. At the same time, the designation blocks assets of the four exchanges within US jurisdiction. Overall, the four exchanges handled around USD 7.7 billion, based on TRM Labs figures. That equals 78% of the crypto volume attributed to Iran in 2025.
Nobitex is the largest of these venues. More than 50% of Iranian digital inflows in 2025 ran through the exchange, according to the Treasury. Wallex reached 12%, Bitpin 10%. Ramzinex also handled transactions worth USD 2.45 billion. In addition, OFAC blocked several Iranian nationals. Among them are Nobitex chairman and co-founder Amir Hossein Rad and CEO Seyed Ali Khoee.
However, the designation did not stop the flow. Three months later, the Financial Times report describes crypto use in export business as normal practice. Sanctions against exchanges hit the infrastructure first, not the underlying payment need. As long as trading partners accept USDT, volume tends to shift to other addresses and intermediaries.
Tether freeze shows the limits of sanctions evasion
Earlier, at the end of April 2026, Tether froze around USD 344 million in USDT on two Tron addresses. According to OFAC, Iran's central bank controlled these addresses. They formed part of a network that moved proceeds from illegal oil sales. Investigators also linked them to structures of the Revolutionary Guard, the IRGC. The Revolutionary Guard is a separate armed force and likewise sits under US sanctions. On Tron the transactions remained valid, only the balance was no longer transferable. The intervention happened at the issuer level, however, not at the blockchain level.
That is exactly where the trade-off of stablecoin use sits. On the one hand, USDT on Tron is cheap, fast and delivers dollar exposure without access to the dollar banking system. On the other hand, Tether can freeze individual addresses, which is technically impossible with Bitcoin. Anyone evading sanctions through USDT thus swaps bank risk for issuer risk.
For financial institutions outside the United States, the risk reaches beyond their home market. Designated Iranian exchanges count as Iranian financial institutions under US sanctions law. US persons therefore may not generally do business with them. Under the OFAC rulebook, the risk still extends to non-US institutions as well, provided they materially support designated exchanges.
Why crypto crime stays below 1% according to Chainalysis
Chainalysis recorded at least USD 154 billion in inflows to illicit addresses for 2025. That is an increase of 162% over the previous year. Nevertheless, the share of illicit activity in attributed transaction volume stays below 1%, as the Crypto Crime Report 2026 shows. Compared with 2024, however, that share has risen only slightly. Unattributed volume stays out of the picture in both directions.
Sanctions-related flows drive most of the increase. In the Chainalysis taxonomy they form their own category, and they grow fastest within it. Specifically, the category covers payments to addresses of sanctioned people, companies and jurisdictions. Value flowing to sanctioned addresses rose 694% year over year. The main drivers were Russia with the ruble token A7A5 as well as Iran-related activity. Consequently, a large part of this statistic comes from sanctions breaches, not from fraud or ransomware.
The figures are lower bounds. Chainalysis regularly revises prior-year values upward, because address attribution continues over time. For 2024, the estimate eventually rose from USD 40.9 billion to USD 57.2 billion. The two data sets do not net against each other either. Both firms additionally use their own attribution data. TRM's USD 9.9 billion for Iran is not a subset of the USD 154 billion. Instead, it is an estimate with its own methodology. It covers incoming and outgoing transactions of Iranian services and entities, mostly ordinary trade and savings. TRM itself reads the persistent volume as an expression of structural demand, not as speculative trading.
