How US and Iran are playing a crypto cat-and-mouse game over sanctions

Just 12 hours before the United States and Israel began attacking Iran in late February, Firouz, a crypto user in Tehran, decided to act. “I was feeling all week the war would start soon,” he said. Trusting his instincts, he moved all his crypto savings out of Nobitex – Iran’s largest digital asset platform and the central hub of the sanctions-hit country’s crypto ecosystem – to his personal digital wallet. “My main thinking was that I could potentially be forfeiting true ownership of any money left in a state-linked or state-monitored Iranian crypto service in the event of war, whether through an action taken by state authorities or as a consequence of cyberattacks,” he said. Recommended Stories list of 3 items end of list Iran’s crypto ecosystem was valued at more than $7.78bn last year, growing at a faster pace compared with 2024, according to crypto transaction monitoring firm Chainalysis. But the data suggests it is not just Iranian citizens who have turned to crypto in a bid to offset the impact of rampant inflation and a weakening currency. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) accounted for about 50 percent of on-chain activity in the fourth quarter, mirroring its dominance in the country’s economy. Harder to trace and easier to transfer than traditional bank payments, crypto offers a way to sell oil, buy weapons and commodities, circumventing sanctions. And it has also been a method of payment for imports of goods. …