Iran’s central bank has quietly eased foreign-exchange controls to let companies settle cross-border trade in bitcoin and USDT, the Financial Times reported on September 9, citing businesspeople, officials and analysts. The shift lets exporters route payments through domestic crypto platforms instead of selling foreign earnings on the government platform at the official rate.
According to the FT, the central bank has spent recent months encouraging companies to bring overseas revenue home “by any available means” as US sanctions and the military conflict squeeze the country’s banking connections. One executive close to the authorities told the paper: “The central bank does not ask how the money was transferred. Receiving cryptocurrency as payment for exports has now become entirely routine.”
What changed for exporters
Under the old rules, exporters had to repatriate a large share of foreign earnings and exchange them at the official rate through a government-run platform, which paid less than the open market. The gap gave exporters a reason to leave money offshore, and many did. The paper quoted one steel exporter working with China: “Previously, we had to promise to return export proceeds to the country and sell them on a special platform at a lower price, which was absurd. Now exporters can use their money to import what their business needs.”
USDT is the settlement vehicle of choice because of its dollar peg and its independence from correspondent banking. Bitcoin and other digital assets also appear in the mix. Companies can now exchange currency on the open market, pay for imports directly from export proceeds, and route part of settlements through Iranian crypto platforms.
Alireza Bozorgmehri of the Iran Digital Transformation Association confirmed to the FT that the central bank has relaxed oversight of crypto exchanges and no longer insists on strict compliance with earlier rules.
The numbers behind the shift
| Measure | Figure | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Digital assets through Iran-linked addresses, 2025 | About $10 billion | TRM Labs |
| Same measure, 2024 | $11.4 billion | TRM Labs |
| Iran’s share of global bitcoin mining | About 4.5% | Elliptic |
| USDT frozen tied to Iran’s central bank | About $344 million | Tether |
| Undeclared export revenues | About €94 billion | Iranian reports via FT |
| Firms and individuals failing to repatriate | More than 20,000 | Iranian reports via FT |
Washington keeps squeezing
The easing runs against the direction of US policy. The Treasury’s OFAC sanctioned four Iranian crypto exchanges, including Wallex and Nobitex, in June under its “Economic Fury” campaign, and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced in July that US authorities had frozen more than $130 million in wallets connected to Iran’s central bank. TRM Labs put fund flows involving sanctioned Iranian entities at $3.84 billion.
On August 24, Bessent launched a campaign targeting Iran’s financial connections and foreign economic partners, and Treasury has warned that digital-asset dealings with Iranian entities can expose foreign firms to secondary sanctions. OFAC’s position is that Iranian digital-asset exchanges remain blocked regardless of Tehran’s domestic rules, which limits their access to US-linked infrastructure. Enforcement expanded again on September 8.
Tether has previously frozen wallet assets tied to Iran’s central bank, which means the stablecoin most useful for sanctions evasion is also the one whose issuer can most easily freeze it. That tension sits under the whole arrangement. Iranian firms using USDT are betting the issuer will not extend those freezes to export settlement, and so far the freezes have concentrated on centrally bank-held wallets rather than commercial traffic.
What it means
The policy is less an endorsement of crypto than an admission that the official channel stopped working. With more than €94 billion in export earnings left undeclared abroad, authorities have decided that recovering some of that money through any channel beats recovering none of it through the official one. The FT’s reporting suggests the same pragmatism is spreading to import payments, where firms can now use foreign revenue directly rather than queuing for government-rate currency.
For compliance teams at exchanges and payment firms outside Iran, the FT report is a warning that USDT flows touching Iranian counterparties are likely to rise, and that Treasury’s secondary-sanctions warnings apply to foreign intermediaries, not just Iranian ones. Analytics firms will be watching whether 2026 volumes reverse the decline TRM Labs recorded between 2024 and 2025.
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