Iran has spent this year charging tankers between $1 million and $2 million to cross the Strait of Hormuz, and the U.S. Treasury said that since June, part of that money has moved through a cryptocurrency exchange in Tehran.
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.