Iran's central bank has stopped enforcing rules that required exporters to repatriate earnings through state-supervised foreign exchange channels, according to the Financial Times (FT) on September 8, 2026. The shift allows Iranian businesses to settle cross-border trade in Tether (USDT) and Bitcoin (BTC) through domestic crypto exchanges, bypassing the government's official exchange platform.
Under the previous system, exporters of oil and other goods had to return a large share of their overseas earnings and sell them through the government's exchange platform at official rates well below market prices. Under the new approach, exporters can fund imports directly with overseas earnings without first converting through the state FX system. An executive described by the FT as close to the regime said the central bank no longer asks how money was transferred.
The scale of crypto activity underlying the shift is substantial. TRM Labs reported nearly $10 billion in cryptocurrency volume through Iran in 2025. Chainalysis and TRM Labs jointly documented over $3.8 billion in transfers between crypto exchange CoinEx and more than 60 sanctioned Iranian entities since 2019, with approximately $1 million per day flowing between CoinEx and Nobitex, Iran's largest domestic exchange. Elliptic analysis found the Central Bank of Iran acquired at least $507 million in USDT, using it to manage foreign exchange markets and support the rial. Tehran political economist Saeed Laylaz told the FT that the further Iran's economy moves underground, the greater the need for cryptocurrencies.
However, the crypto route has a structural vulnerability. Tether, as a centralized issuer, cooperates with OFAC and can freeze USDT at the smart-contract level. Since April 2026, Tether has frozen approximately $475 million in wallets linked to the Central Bank of Iran: $344 million in April and $131 million in July, after OFAC designated additional addresses.
The US has escalated enforcement through Operation Economic Fury, launched in April 2026. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced in May that authorities had seized roughly $1 billion in Iranian crypto assets. In June, four Iranian crypto exchanges — Nobitex, Wallex, Bitpin, and Ramzinex — were sanctioned. In July, OFAC froze more than $130 million in digital assets linked to Iran's central bank wallets. Elliptic estimates that Iran accounts for 4.5% of global Bitcoin mining hashrate, though the Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance puts the figure at 0.12%, citing potential undercounts due to VPN use by Iranian miners.
Bitcoin differs from Tether in a critical respect: it has no centralized issuer and no freeze mechanism. An Iranian exporter routing trade through self-custodied BTC via a peer-to-peer exchange cannot have funds reversed or frozen by any single entity. As US enforcement squeezes stablecoin access, Iranian actors may pivot further toward Bitcoin — the one monetary channel Washington cannot shut down. The question is whether Tether freezes will prove sufficient to make crypto-based settlement unworkable, or whether Iran will successfully scale Bitcoin adoption as a sanctions-resistant settlement rail.
Sources
- [CoinTelegraph: Iran Eases Currency Controls as Traders Use Crypto: Report](cointelegraph.com)
- [Bitcoin.com News: Cut off From Global Finance, Iran Turns to Bitcoin and Tether](news.bitcoin.com)
