U.S. authorities are investigating whether cryptocurrency platforms enabled Iranian officials to evade international sanctions, with Treasury officials examining flows estimated at $8 billion to $10 billion annually — a probe that could reshape compliance requirements across the global crypto industry and put stablecoins under heightened scrutiny.
What Happened: Treasury Probes Iran Crypto Flows
Ari Redbord, global head of policy at TRM Labs, told Reuters that U.S. investigators are examining whether specific crypto platforms helped state-linked Iranian actors move money abroad, access hard currency, or procure goods in violation of sanctions. Redbord said he had direct knowledge of the Treasury's concerns.
TRM Labs estimates Iranian crypto activity reached roughly $10 billion in 2025, slightly down from $11.4 billion in 2024. Chainalysis, another blockchain analytics firm, pegged the figure at a record $7.8 billion received by Iranian-linked wallets last year, up from $3.17 billion in 2023.
No specific exchanges or tokens have been publicly named in the investigation.
Chainalysis estimates about 50% of Iran's crypto volume involves the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, while TRM Labs puts retail activity at 95% but has still identified more than 5,000 IRGC-linked wallet addresses and traced roughly $3 billion in flows since 2023. Elliptic, a British blockchain research company, reported last month that the Central Bank of Iran acquired at least $507 million worth of Tether (USDT) in 2025 to bypass the global banking system.
Iran's U.N. mission did not respond to requests for comment. Tether said it maintains "a zero-tolerance policy toward the criminal use of our tokens" and works with law enforcement to freeze assets linked to illegal activity.
Inside Iran, local exchange Nobitex told Reuters that about 15 million people in the country have crypto exposure based on industry estimates. The exchange said it has 11 million customers, with most activity coming from retail investors using digital assets as a store of value against the depreciating rial.
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Why It Matters: Compliance Pressure Intensifies
The investigation signals that digital assets are now embedded in global sanctions enforcement, not operating outside it.
Tom Keatinge, director of the Centre for Finance and Security at Royal United Services Institute, said the scale of the challenge facing U.S. authorities is enormous. "It requires significant resources to do the kind of blockchain tracing and so on, to issue the sanctions," he said. "It's the ultimate high-speed whack-a-mole game."
TRM Labs reports that illicit crypto flows to sanctioned wallets reached approximately $158 billion in 2025. Sanctions-related activity rose more than 400%, with stablecoins comprising about 95% of sanctioned inflows.
Andrew Fierman, Chainalysis head of national security intelligence, noted that when a crypto wallet is publicly sanctioned, owners can easily create new ones — complicating enforcement efforts.
U.S. agencies are expected to respond with expanded wallet blacklists, targeted sanctions, and stricter expectations for exchanges and stablecoin issuers around detecting and blocking Iran-linked activity. Platforms that serve higher-risk jurisdictions or list major stablecoins face rising enforcement risk if their monitoring proves inadequate.
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