New US pressure on cryptocurrency transactions in Iran; Who pays?
On Sunday, September 22, the US Treasury Department approved "Bitbank", a cryptocurrency exchange attributed to Babak Zanjani. Washington says that this exchange was involved in the transfer of hundreds of millions of dollars in Bitcoin to the Revolutionary Guards, as well as in the transfer of payments related to the passage of ships through the Strait of Hormuz.
Three days earlier, the New York federal prosecutor's office sought the forfeiture of approximately $61 million in cryptocurrency, which US authorities say was obtained from the sale of Iran-sanctioned oil. The network of wallets connected to this case, according to the New York prosecutor, moved more than a billion and a half dollars in total.
🔸Bitbank sanctions are a continuation of the series of actions taken by the United States in recent months against exchanges, wallets and other parts of the cryptocurrency network related to Iran; A network that found various uses in Iran's economy within the framework of sanctions. While government institutions and related networks have turned to it to transfer money outside the banking system, for many citizens, Tether and Bitcoin have become a tool to preserve the value of assets, transfer money or carry out some business activity.
However, there is no accurate estimate of the amount of money flowing through these cryptocurrency networks in Iran, and two major blockchain analytics firms have provided different estimates of the size of this market.
The American company "Tiaram Labs", which deals in the field of analyzing blockchain transactions, predicts that the scope of cryptocurrency activity related to Iran will be about 10 billion dollars in 2025. According to the company, a little more than 580 million dollars, equivalent to about 5.9 percent of the observed volume, was related to illegal or sanctioned activities.
Another blockchain analytics firm called Chain Analytics provided a lower overall figure of about $7.8 billion. The difference in these data is due to the different methods of these companies in identifying wallets and transactions related to Iran.
Read the full report on the Radio Farda website.