Iran’s Strait of Hormuz toll booth ran through a bitcoin exchange, U.S. says
The U.S. Treasury has sanctioned BitBank, an Iranian cryptocurrency exchange, and its software developer for facilitating financial transactions for the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. The move aims to disrupt Iran's use of digital assets to bypass international sanctions and fund state-linked entities.
Why it matters
It demonstrates the U.S. government's increasing focus on regulating and penalizing the use of crypto infrastructure in international sanctions evasion.
A Thursday release shows The Office of Foreign Assets Control has designated BitBank, a Tehran crypto exchange set up in 2024, alongwith Pishtaz Simorgh Electronic Trade Company, the software firm that built it.
"Today's designations of Iranian digital asset infrastructure make perfectly clear that efforts to finance the Iranian regime using cryptocurrencies are not beyond OFAC's reach," Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent.
The OFAC alleged BitBank moved hundreds of millions of dollars in bitcoin to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the branch of Iran's armed forces that controls much of the country's economy and is designated as a terrorist organization by the U.S.
Over the same period, Hormuz Safe Marine Services Authority — the outfit Tehran uses to sell ships "safe passage" insurance, itself sanctioned on July 29 — began using BitBank to pass what it collected on to regime entities.
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