It is no surprise that Iran now accepts cryptocurrency payments from cargo ships passing through the Strait of Hormuz. Blockchain crime experts say this measure fits perfectly with existing business networks in Tehran that evade sanctions.
Iran’s crypto tolls have now been confirmed through recent comments from a spokesperson for the Union of Iranian Oil, Gas and Petrochemical Exporters, who said that bitcoin is accepted as a payment method. An earlier report suggested that stablecoins were being accepted to allow a select few tankers to pass unscathed. Both reports indicated that the rate was $1 per barrel of oil, with the largest tankers carrying up to two million barrels.
Formalizing a system of shipping toll payments made using bitcoin and USD-pegged stablecoins appears to be a bold move. However, in reality, the Iranian regime, and more specifically the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), has been increasingly using cryptocurrencies in recent years to facilitate cross-border trade, especially with Iranian oil sales, according to data from blockchain analysis specialist Chainalysis.
“It is not at all surprising that this type of trade is also conducted through cryptocurrencies,” said Andrew Fierman, head of national security intelligence at Chainalysis, referring to the toll paid by ships allowed to sail through the Strait of Hormuz, a narrow shipping channel through which about a fifth of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas typically pass.
A snapshot of sanctioned activity over the past year and a half shows a complex and growing network using crypto wallets. In December 2024, a financier affiliated with the US-sanctioned IRGC and linked to the Iran-backed Houthi regime facilitated sales of Iranian oil to Yemen using cryptocurrency addresses. This represented more than $178 million in transfers in a single year.
Then, in April 2025, a broader network of Houthi financiers was buying weapons and commodities from Russia. Their cryptocurrency addresses were included in a sanctions designation representing nearly $1 billion in activity, again in roughly the course of the year.
Interestingly, the Houthis, an Iranian-backed armed group that controls much of northern Yemen, have now raised the possibility of imposing a second bottleneck to global oil and gas trade in the Bab-al-Mandeb canal that connects the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden.
In any case, the picture is of IRGC-affiliated networks using cryptocurrencies on a commercial scale to facilitate cross-border trade, according to Chianalysis’ Fierman. It’s a much more complex and established system than just a handful of wallets used in perpetuity, he said.
“They have a network of cryptocurrency wallets that the regime is using to facilitate this cross-border activity. Accepting these payments in cryptocurrency would make it easier than potentially using the traditional banking system and there is enough liquidity out there that they don’t even need to use cryptocurrency exchanges,” Fierman said in an interview.
The way the IRGC is widely adopting cryptocurrencies, specifically stablecoins, as a payment mechanism for cross-border trade, is actually the reverse of the situation with North Korea, Fierman noted, where the main goal is to steal billions of dollars in cryptocurrencies and launder them.
The Iranian regime has been extensively sanctioned since 1979, including individual sanctions on almost all banks, so their inability to access assets pegged to the US dollar makes it a challenge for them to trade internationally.
“The reality is that most of their counterparties do not want to trade in rials or Tokens, especially considering the hyperinflation that also occurs regularly in the country. Therefore, this ability to obtain an asset pegged to the US dollar creates a mechanism that allows them to trade globally with anyone who is willing to trade with them, in an alternative mechanism that does not depend on the traditional banking system,” Fierman said.
In Iran, the official currency is the rial (IRR), but people universally use the Toman every day in stores, for example; one Toman is equivalent to 10 Rials.
Tom Keatinge, founding director of the Center for Finance and Security (CFS) at UK defense think tank RUSI, agreed that dollar-backed stablecoins have become an increasingly important payment mechanism for the Iranian regime that avoids Western sanctions and banking controls.
“While the use of stablecoins could expose users to Western regulatory intervention, evidence suggests this risk is low,” Keatinge said in an email.
Lee Reiners, a professor at Duke University’s Center for Financial Economics, suggested a novel way the Iranian regime could further its goals of avoiding stablecoin sanctions.
“If Iran was thinking strategically, it could follow the lead of its cross-strait neighbors in the United Arab Emirates and demand payment in $1,” Reiners said, referring to the stablecoin launched by Trump family-affiliated World Liberty Financial in March 2025. “Then the president of the United States would have a financial incentive to lift sanctions and allow them to collect whatever tolls they want.”
