US Treasury Targets Iran’s $7.8B Sanctions Evasion Crypto Sector

The US Treasury Iran sanctions campaign just took its most sweeping turn yet, with regulators formally branding Iran’s entire digital asset sector as fair game for enforcement. The move, announced through the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), doesn’t target a single wallet or exchange — it targets the whole system Tehran has been quietly building to dodge the dollar-based financial world using Bitcoin and the stablecoin Tether.

Key takeaways

• OFAC designated Iran’s digital asset sector as sanctionable under Executive Order 13902, allowing sector-wide rather than entity-by-entity enforcement.
• Chainalysis estimates Iran’s crypto ecosystem exceeded $7.8 billion in 2025, with IRGC-linked wallets driving more than half of Q4 on-chain activity.
• Iran’s central bank bought at least $507 million in USDT, according to Elliptic, using it as a reserve outside the traditional dollar system.
• Operation Economic Fury has frozen or sanctioned roughly $1 billion in Iran-linked crypto since April 2026; Tether alone blocked $344 million in April and $131 million more in July.
• OFAC sanctioned exchanges Nobitex, Wallex, Bitpin, and Ramzinex, plus two Nobitex executives, and a Ukrainian broker tied to over $100 million in IRGC oil payments.