US authorities have expanded their crackdown on Iran’s use of digital assets, sanctioning four domestic crypto exchanges and freezing or seizing nearly $1 billion in cryptocurrency since February 2026. The campaign, called Operation Economic Fury, combines blockchain tracing, sanctions designations and stablecoin freezes to disrupt networks Washington says are used for sanctions evasion and military financing.
The effort has also highlighted the scale of the broader system around those flows. A Wall Street Journal investigation reported that Iran-linked entities moved more than $3.84 billion through offshore exchange CoinEx since 2019, while Chainalysis estimated Iranian crypto outflows reached $4.18 billion in 2025 alone.
Treasury escalates after April launch
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent introduced Operation Economic Fury on April 14, 2026, as the financial component of the US response to the conflict that began with joint US and Israeli strikes on Tehran in February. According to the Treasury campaign described in the source material, the focus is Iran’s use of crypto exchanges, wallets and conventional financial channels.
One of the first major crypto actions came in April, when Tether froze about $344 million in USDT across two Tron wallets that US authorities linked to Iranian networks. One address held roughly $213 million and the other about $131 million. Blockchain analysis cited in the source tied the transaction patterns to wallets associated with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and intermediaries linked to the Central Bank of Iran.
Treasury widened the campaign in June by sanctioning Nobitex, Wallex, Bitpin and Ramzinex. Nobitex is the largest of the group, handling about half of Iran’s crypto trading volume according to Chainalysis and claiming 11 million users. Treasury also added Nobitex CEO Seyed Ali Khoee and chairman Amir Hossein Rad to the OFAC sanctions list. In July, authorities froze another $131 million in USDT in four Tron wallets tied to the Central Bank of Iran, bringing the total amount frozen or seized since February close to $1 billion by late July, according to Bessent.
CoinEx becomes a focus of offshore scrutiny
While Treasury acted against Iranian platforms, reporting by The Wall Street Journal pointed to an important offshore route. On June 24, the newspaper reported that Iran-linked entities had moved more than $3.84 billion through CoinEx since 2019, citing TRM Labs data and public blockchain records.
Investigators also traced activity from two wallets controlled by the Central Bank of Iran and found links to assets stolen in the North Korean Bybit hack, which involved about $1.5 billion in virtual assets. The report did not say CoinEx had been newly sanctioned. As of the source article’s publication, the exchange remained outside new US sanctions but under greater regulatory scrutiny.
CoinEx denied knowledge of Iran-linked activity, arguing that on-chain flows through a platform do not by themselves prove awareness or participation. The exchange said it had strengthened Iran-related risk reviews, geo-fencing, sanctions screening and transaction monitoring.
Rising crypto use inside Iran
The enforcement push comes amid heavy crypto adoption in Iran. Chainalysis estimated that Iranian crypto outflows reached $4.18 billion in 2025, up 70% from a year earlier. The increase coincided with a sharp decline in the Iranian rial and with sanctions that further restricted access to the global banking system.
The source article notes that this makes crypto serve multiple functions at once: a channel for sanctions evasion, but also a tool ordinary people use to preserve savings and move value across borders. That overlap complicates enforcement. When a large exchange such as Nobitex is sanctioned, the impact may extend beyond state-linked actors to civilians using digital assets as a hedge against inflation.
Reuters, as cited in the source, reported that Nobitex was founded in 2018 by brothers Ali and Mohammad Kharrazi, who used the surname Aghamir, and that they belong to a politically connected Iranian family. Nobitex rejected the characterization and said it is a private, independent company with no relationship to the IRGC, Iran’s central bank or other state institutions.
Why stablecoins have been central to enforcement
The most effective enforcement actions so far have relied on centralized stablecoins rather than on blockchains alone. USDT includes issuer controls that allow Tether to freeze specific addresses, which is why the biggest actions in the Iran campaign have centered on Tron-based USDT wallets. Together, the April and July freezes accounted for $475 million.
That mechanism gives authorities a practical chokepoint when sanctioned actors hold assets in a token that can be frozen. But the same approach does not work for decentralized assets such as bitcoin, which cannot be halted by an issuer. The source article says Iranian operators also use bitcoin, Ethereum-based assets and other channels, meaning freezes can disrupt some of the largest visible flows without stopping the entire network.
The next confirmed questions are whether US authorities move against additional offshore exchanges and whether the total amount frozen continues to rise. The CoinEx case is likely to remain a key test of how far Washington is willing to extend pressure beyond Iranian platforms, especially after reported links between Iran-related wallets and assets from the Bybit hack drew attention to shared infrastructure used by sanctioned states and cybercrime networks.
Source: crypto.news