The Central Bank of Iran, the country’s monetary authority responsible for setting foreign exchange policy, has reportedly relaxed its currency control regime in a move that gives businesses greater flexibility to bring foreign earnings back into the country, including through digital assets like Tether’s USDT and Bitcoin.
According to a Financial Times article published on Wednesday, Iranian exporters can now use crypto channels via domestic exchanges to settle down cross-border transactions, bypassing the official currency conversion process of the country entirely. As Washington continues to tighten the sanctions pressure on Tehran, Iranian businesses resort more to crypto payment rails as a way around for accessing international markets.
JUST IN: 🇮🇷🇺🇸 Iran is using crypto including Bitcoin and USDT to bypass US sanctions, FT reports. pic.twitter.com/zkCugxSQVu
— Watcher.Guru (@WatcherGuru) September 9, 2026
Exporters Gain More Flexibility Under Relaxed Rules
Under the newly eased framework, Iranian exporters no longer need to convert their foreign currency earnings through the government’s official exchange platform before using those funds.
Instead, they can now apply that revenue directly toward financing imports, a change that effectively simplifies a process that previously required routing every transaction through state-controlled currency markets.
The report also noted that this flexibility extends specifically to crypto-based settlement, letting businesses use USDT and Bitcoin through Iranian cryptocurrency exchanges as an alternative payment bridge for international trade
A Pattern Of Crypto Use Amid Mounting US Pressure
This development doesn’t exist in isolation. Blockchain analytics firm TRM Labs reported back in June that more than $3.8 billion had moved between crypto exchange CoinEx and sanctioned Iranian entities over a span exceeding seven years, though CoinEx has firmly denied maintaining any commercial relationship with either the Iranian government or domestic Iranian exchanges, stating it never provided funding channels to sanctioned parties.
U.S. authorities, meanwhile, have escalated their crackdown considerably. In early June, the Treasury Department sanctioned four Iranian crypto exchanges as part of what it labeled its “Economic Fury” campaign, and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent revealed around that same time that the U.S. had already seized roughly $1 billion in Iranian crypto assets.
That administration push continued into July, when Bessent confirmed authorities had frozen more than $130 million in crypto tied to wallets linked to Iran’s central bank, part of a broader pattern of asset freezes that has reportedly totaled over $344 million in Iran-linked crypto holdings to date.
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