When international sanctions cut Iran off from global banking, the country didn’t just sit still-it built its own financial underground. And the backbone of that system? Cryptocurrency.
Why Iran Turned to Crypto
In 2025, Iran still couldn’t use SWIFT. Its banks were locked out of most international transactions. Dollars were hard to get. Euros? Forget it. Traditional trade routes collapsed under U.S. and EU sanctions. But oil still needed to be sold. Imports like medicine and machinery still had to come in. So Iran turned to something that couldn’t be easily blocked: digital assets. Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Tron became the new currency of survival. Not because people loved crypto-many didn’t-but because there was no other way to move money across borders. The government didn’t outlaw it. It regulated it. And then weaponized it. The Central Bank of Iran started requiring licenses for every mining operation. It shut down rial-based payment gateways for exchanges to stop people from cashing out locally. But it allowed crypto to be used for imports. That’s the twist: you couldn’t pay for your groceries with Bitcoin, but you could use it to buy industrial equipment from Turkey or China. The goal wasn’t to replace the rial-it was to bypass the dollar.The Mining Boom That Strained the Grid
Iran became one of the world’s top Bitcoin producers. By 2022, over 10,000 licensed mining farms were running. At its peak, the country mined nearly 5% of all new Bitcoin globally. That’s not small. That’s a national infrastructure project disguised as energy policy. But here’s the catch: Bitcoin mining eats electricity. And Iran’s power grid was already stretched thin. In 2024 and early 2025, rolling blackouts hit major cities. People blamed the mining farms. Farmers in Isfahan and Kerman said their irrigation pumps stopped because the grid couldn’t handle the load. The government started cracking down-not because it hated crypto, but because it couldn’t afford the blackouts. The state didn’t shut down mining. It just took control. Only licensed miners could buy subsidized electricity. Unlicensed rigs got cut off. The goal? Keep the mining going, but make sure the state got paid and the lights stayed on.Nobitex: The Heart of Iran’s Crypto Ecosystem
If you wanted to trade crypto in Iran in 2025, you used Nobitex. It wasn’t just the biggest exchange-it was the only one that mattered. With over 11 million users, it handled billions in trades every month. People sold their Bitcoin for rials to pay rent. Businesses bought foreign crypto to pay for imports. The government turned a blind eye… until it didn’t. By mid-2025, intelligence firms like Elliptic linked Nobitex to wallets tied to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. The exchange wasn’t just a marketplace-it was a pipeline. Oil sales in Asia? Paid in crypto. Payments to suppliers in Dubai? Sent through Nobitex wallets. The system worked-until it didn’t. On June 18, 2025, Nobitex was hacked. Over $90 million vanished in a single attack. The breach wasn’t just a security failure. It was a strategic blow. For the first time, Iran’s entire crypto trade network was exposed as fragile. The government scrambled to freeze accounts. Users panicked. The message was clear: even your state-backed crypto lifeline could vanish overnight.
The 0 Million Shadow Network
The U.S. Treasury didn’t sit back and watch. In September 2025, OFAC unveiled a $600 million Iranian shadow banking network. It wasn’t just one exchange. It was a web of front companies, fake invoices, and crypto wallets spread across Turkey, the UAE, and Malaysia. The network moved over $100 million in crypto directly tied to Iranian oil sales between 2023 and 2025. One key figure? Arash Estaki Alivand. His Ethereum and Tron wallets were publicly listed by OFAC. He wasn’t some anonymous hacker-he was a known operator with ties to the IRGC Quds Force. His network used crypto to pay for shipping, insurance, and even bribes. Blockchain analysis firms tracked every move. The transparency of Bitcoin and Ethereum? That’s what brought him down. Iran thought crypto was invisible. It wasn’t. Every transaction left a digital fingerprint. Chainalysis and Elliptic didn’t need inside sources-they just needed public blockchain data and smart mapping. The result? Wallets were frozen. Banks cut off connections. Trade partners got scared.The Flaw in the Plan
Iran’s crypto strategy looked smart on paper: mine Bitcoin with cheap gas, sell it abroad, use the proceeds to buy what you need. But reality was messier. First, mining ate too much power. Second, the global crypto market didn’t want to touch Iranian coins. Exchanges like Binance and Coinbase blocked Iranian IPs. Even decentralized platforms started filtering Iranian wallets. Third, the government couldn’t control the flow. While it allowed crypto for imports, ordinary Iranians used it to buy iPhones and luxury goods. That wasn’t the plan. And then there was the Nobitex hack. It wasn’t just about the money lost. It was about trust. If the state’s own exchange could be breached, how safe was your crypto? If your import payment went through a wallet tied to the IRGC, were you risking U.S. sanctions too? The strategy wasn’t failing because crypto was bad. It was failing because it was too visible, too risky, and too dependent on a single point of failure: Nobitex.
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