Iran Ran Hormuz Tanker Tolls via Bitcoin Exchange

The US Treasury has sanctioned BitBank, a Tehran-based bitcoin exchange it says Iran used to move hundreds of millions of dollars in cryptocurrency to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and to pass on tanker tolls charged at the Strait of Hormuz.

The Office of Foreign Assets Control, the Treasury arm that administers US sanctions, designated BitBank and Pishtaz Simorgh Electronic Trade Company, the software firm that built the exchange, in an action under Operation Economic Outcast confirmed in the announcement. OFAC says the exchange was set up in 2024. The designation freezes its property in US jurisdiction and bars Americans from dealing with it.

The allegations reach further. Iran has spent this year charging tankers between $1 million and $2 million to cross the Strait of Hormuz, and the Treasury said that since June, part of that money has moved through the exchange. The Hormuz Safe Marine Services Authority, the outfit Tehran uses to sell ships “safe passage” insurance, was itself sanctioned on July 29 and, per OFAC, began using BitBank in June to pass what it collected on to regime entities.

Every designation also carries a secondary sanctions tag. That means a foreign firm still processing BitBank’s flows is exposed to US penalties, a direct compliance risk for exchanges and banks outside the United States.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent framed the action as a warning to anyone financing the Iranian government with digital assets. “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,” he said in the release.

One break from precedent stands out: the action listed no wallet addresses. OFAC’s January designation of the Zedcex exchange, by contrast, published seven tron wallets that compliance teams could screen against. Without addresses, on-chain screening software has nothing to load for BitBank, and no independent check of the alleged flows is possible from the announcement alone.

Iran has not commented on the designations, and no vessel operator has confirmed paying through the exchange.