Iran's $7.8 Billion Crypto Economy Finds New Way to Grow After Cease-Fire — WSJ

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By Vicky Ge Huang and Benoit Faucon

Iran's demand that oil tankers pay transit tolls in cryptocurrency for passing through the Strait of Hormuz has cast a new light on the country's $7.8 billion crypto economy and the role digital currencies play for regimes operating outside the mainstream financial system.

Hamid Hosseini, a spokesperson for Iran's Oil, Gas and Petrochemical Products Exporters' Union, told The Wall Street Journal on Wednesday that Iran is collecting a tariff of $1 per barrel of oil for tankers passing through the key shipping lane, and wants to receive the payments in cryptocurrency to ensure that they can't be traced or confiscated because of sanctions.

Iran's crypto ecosystem has grown rapidly in recent years amid sanctions, currency devaluation and external military threat, reaching about $7.8 billion last year, according to Chainalysis data.

Analysts and researchers say the Iranian regime has used billions of dollars in cryptocurrencies to conduct trades, acquire weapons and commodities, and stockpile funds. At the same time, digital currencies have also offered a financial lifeline for everyday Iranians who have battled high inflation and the collapse of their home currency, the Iranian rial.

The situation in Iran echoes that of Venezuela, where the stablecoin tether serves as both a tool for the state-run oil industry to circumvent sanctions and a lifeline for everyday people struggling against a devaluing currency, the bolivar.

The paramilitary Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has been among the most active users on Iran's cryptocurrency market, often straining the country's scarce electricity resources to mine bitcoin, said a professional bitcoin trader in the central city of Isfahan.

"In any comprehensively sanctioned jurisdiction, crypto is useful," said Kaitlin Martin, senior intelligence analyst at Chainalysis. "It's very easy to settle cross-border trades and settlements. It's fast. It's relatively easy to come to obtain, given the vibrant crypto atmosphere in Iran."

How the digital-currency tolls on oil tankers would work in practice is unclear, crypto analysts said. It won't be easy for shipping companies to acquire and then transfer large slugs of tokens under a tight deadline, they said. Buying, storing and moving digital currencies can pose operational hurdles, even in ideal conditions.

Bitcoin rose as high as roughly $72,700 after President Trump declared on Tuesday evening a two-week cease-fire subject to Iran's reopening of the Strait of Hormuz. The largest cryptocurrency was trading around $72,128 as of 4 p.m. ET Thursday.

Iran's decision to charge tanker transit tolls in cryptocurrency is the latest example of how Iranian crypto activity is increasingly dominated by the state. The IRGC, Iran's strongest political and economic force, as well as its proxies, accounted for more than half of the country's crypto activity, according to Chainalysis.

Bitcoin isn't the only cryptocurrency used by the Iranian regime. The Central Bank of Iran has acquired at least $507 million of tether — the world's largest stablecoin pegged to the U.S. dollar — in an apparent bid to prop up the domestic currency and settle international trade, according to a January report from blockchain analytics firm Elliptic.

In the months leading up to the war, Iranians had increasingly migrated their bitcoin holdings from local crypto exchanges to their personal wallets, fearing state-imposed internet blackouts and financial seizures during domestic protests. And two days after the late-February airstrikes, total exchange outflows had reached about 10.3 million, according to Chainalysis data.

Elliptic also noted a 700% surge in outflows from Nobitex, Iran's largest crypto exchange, within minutes of the initial U.S.-Israeli attacks on Iran. The exodus suggests that the people were withdrawing their funds and sending them to overseas crypto exchanges that typically draw tokens from Iranian accounts during moments of instability, Elliptic said. With more than 11 million users, Nobitex is the primary gateway for Iranian citizens to swap rials for tether, which they can convert into other currencies abroad.

Last year, a pro-Israel hacking group called "Predatory Sparrow" drained more than $90 million from Nobitex.

While the scale of the recent crypto movement in Iran is significant, blockchain researchers caution that outflows aren't unusual during periods of geopolitical turmoil. Analysts are still parsing the data to distinguish between panic-selling by citizens, state-linked transfers and routine exchange rebalancing.

U.S. regulators have targeted Iran's digital infrastructure before. In January, the U.S. Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control sanctioned two U.K.-registered crypto exchanges, Zedcex and Zedxion, for facilitating approximately $1 billion in transactions linked to the IRGC, according to TRM Labs.

Write to Vicky Ge Huang at vicky.huang@wsj.com and Benoit Faucon at benoit.faucon@wsj.com
source: https://www.tradingview.com/news/DJN_DN20260409006366:0/