The Iranian government's decision to accept cryptocurrency payments from cargo ships traversing the Strait of Hormuz is a strategic move that aligns with its existing sanctions-evading trade networks, experts say. This development has been confirmed by a spokesperson for Iran's Oil, Gas and Petrochemical Products Exporters' Union, who stated that bitcoin is being accepted as a payment method.
Previous reports suggested that stablecoins were also being accepted, allowing select oil tankers to pass through unharmed, with a fee of $1 per barrel of oil. The formalization of a cryptocurrency-based toll payment system appears to be a bold move, but it is consistent with the Iranian regime's growing use of cryptocurrency to facilitate cross-border trade, particularly with regard to oil sales, as indicated by data from blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis.
Andrew Fierman, head of national security intelligence at Chainalysis, noted that it is unsurprising to see this type of trade being conducted via cryptocurrency. A review of sanctioned activity over the past year and a half reveals a complex and expanding network utilizing crypto wallets. In December 2024, a US-sanctioned, IRGC-affiliated financier linked to the Iran-backed Houthi regime facilitated Iranian oil sales to Yemen, involving cryptocurrency addresses, with transfers totaling over $178 million in a single year.
In April 2025, a broader network of Houthi financiers purchased weapons and commodities from Russia, with their cryptocurrency addresses included in a sanctions designation accounting for nearly a billion dollars in activity over the course of a year. The Houthis, an Iran-backed armed group controlling much of northern Yemen, have raised the prospect of imposing a second chokepoint on the world's oil and gas shipping trade at the Bab-al-Mandeb channel. According to Fierman, the picture is one of IRGC-affiliated networks using crypto at a commercial scale to facilitate cross-border trade, with a network of cryptocurrency wallets that the regime uses to facilitate this activity.
The Iranian regime has been comprehensively sanctioned since 1979, including individual sanctions on almost every bank, making it challenging for them to access US dollar-pegged assets and trade internationally. The use of stablecoins, specifically, creates a mechanism that allows them to trade globally with anyone willing to trade with them, in an alternative mechanism that does not rely on the traditional banking system. Tom Keatinge, founding director of the Centre for Finance and Security at UK defense think tank RUSI, agreed that USD-backed stablecoins have become an increasingly important payment mechanism for the Iranian regime, avoiding sanctions and western banking controls.
Lee Reiners, a lecturing fellow at Duke University's Financial Economics Center, suggested that Iran could further its sanctions-evading goals by demanding payment in USD1, a stablecoin launched by the Trump family-affiliated World Liberty Financial in March 2025.