Bloomberg has confirmed what many suspected. Iran’s regime is exploiting Bitcoin and crypto to transfer billions and evade sanctions.
The assertion is consistent with a series of Bloomberg reports up to 2026. The crypto market in Iran has expanded to $7.8 billion, and people and even the regime have relied on it during times of crisis.
What Bloomberg Found
Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has integrated digital currency into its toll system for tankers transiting the Strait of Hormuz, Bloomberg reported. In 2025 alone, wallets associated with the Guard received over $3 billion in crypto, representing over half of the nation’s total crypto inflow.
Bitcoin and stablecoins provide Iran with something that the banking system cannot. Tokens can be transferred between borders without ever interacting with SWIFT, and they are more difficult to freeze once they are out of a wallet.
The same trend has been unfolding as Bitcoin dropped below $63,000 amid rising tensions between the US and Iran.
Washington Is Pushing Back
The US Treasury is not sitting idly by. OFAC sanctioned Iran’s largest exchange, Nobitex, and three smaller platforms in June, after determining that Nobitex handled over half of all Iranian digital asset inflows in 2025.
As part of that campaign, Treasury has already frozen nearly half a billion dollars in regime-related crypto. Institutional investors have also noticed, as BlackRock’s spot Bitcoin ETF saw a $59 million outflow as geopolitical risk rose.
The read by TrendingBitcoin that this “proves” Bitcoin is becoming a reserve asset is a stretch that should be flagged. A sanctioned regime using crypto as a conduit for funds is more of a commentary on the holes in the sanctions net than it is on the central banks and reserve managers’ attitude towards Bitcoin.
Nevertheless, the scale is genuine and it is expanding at a rate that is outpacing enforcement. In these types of stress situations, sanctioned states, war, and capital flight – Bitcoin’s comparison to gold as a hard asset keeps coming up.
