The U.S. Treasury sanctioned BitBank, a Tehran-based cryptocurrency exchange, alleging it moved hundreds of millions of dollars in bitcoin to Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and processed payments collected from commercial vessels transiting the Strait of Hormuz.
Office of Foreign Assets Control designated the exchange and Pishtaz Simorgh Electronic Trade Company, the software firm that built it, in a Thursday release. BitBank was set up in 2024.
Since June, part of the fees collected by the Hormuz Safe Marine Services Authority have moved through the exchange, according to the Treasury. Hormuz Safe charges tankers between $1 million and $2 million for "safe passage" through the chokepoint, which handles a large share of global oil shipments. The authority itself was sanctioned on July 29.
HormuzSafe, developed by Iran's economy ministry, advertises insurance, traffic control and emergency response to vessels that pay. Shipping lawyers have called the arrangement a violation of transit rights under international law, the OFAC said.
The designations freeze BitBank's property under U.S. jurisdiction and bar Americans from dealing with it. A secondary sanctions clause extends exposure to foreign firms: an exchange in Dubai or a bank in Istanbul that processes BitBank transactions can be cut off from the U.S. financial system regardless of whether any American party is involved.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the designations "make perfectly clear that efforts to finance the Iranian regime using cryptocurrencies are not beyond OFAC's reach."
Wednesday's action did not include any cryptocurrency wallet addresses, a departure from past crypto designations. OFAC has previously published bitcoin and tron addresses, including seven tron wallets when it named Zedcex in January. Those strings are what compliance teams load into screening software.
The Revolutionary Guard Corps, designated as a terrorist organization by the United States, controls much of Iran's economy. The Treasury alleged BitBank routed the bulk of its collected fees to the Guard over the relevant period.
