Iran wants tolls paid in bitcoin for Strait of Hormuz passage

Iran told tanker operators on Wednesday that they must pay bitcoin (BTC) to pass through the Strait of Hormuz.

The use of BTC, mentioned by name by Hamid Hosseini, a spokesman for the country’s oil exporters’ union, ensures payments “can’t be traced or confiscated due to sanctions,” even though the first part of that quote is certainly inaccurate.

Moreover, there will be “a few seconds” to pay, according to the spokesman.

All BTC can be traced on-chain, and the US Treasury has sanctioned Iranian BTC wallet addresses since at least 2018.

Even more embarrassingly, the spokesman claimed that BTC payments will complete within seconds, even though BTC transactions normally require several minutes to settle.

Anyway, Hosseini claims that oil tankers will somehow email Iranian authorities about cargo, submit to an inspection, and then pay a toll of $1 per barrel of oil in BTC.

FT published the news at 8:57am New York time. Whether on that news or for unrelated reasons, BTC rallied from $72,000 to $72,865 within 20 minutes. BTC then retraced that rally entirely, dipping back below $92,000 within half an hour.

Prior to the news last night, BTC rallied substantially, gaining about 6% on ceasefire discussions between the US and Iran.

Iran’s bitcoin rationale is half-right

Although BTC is easy to trace, the unfreezable half of Hosseini’s logic is technically defensible. 

Unlike BTC, most major stablecoins can be frozen. Blockchain analytics firm Elliptic found Iran’s central bank accumulated over $500 million worth of tether (USDT) in 2025. In June of that year, Tether froze $37 million in wallets linked to the central bank. 

In March 2026, Tether froze another $6.7 million tied to IRGC and Houthi-linked networks. 

Unlike BTC which settles over several minutes, USDT can settle within seconds. The stablecoin served as Iran’s preferred oil settlement rail, until Tether started blacklisting its wallets. 

Read more: US hits Iran’s ‘shadow banking’ network in Hong Kong, UAE

Sanctioning Iranian BTC wallets

Although no company can freeze BTC, the US Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) sanctioned Iranian BTC wallets on ransomware allegations in November 2018.

Since then, Chainalysis, Elliptic, and TRM Labs have built entire product lines around mapping Iranian-linked BTC and crypto flows.

In January 2026, OFAC designated UK-registered exchanges Zedcex and Zedxion for processing crypto assets for Iran’s IRGC, attaching crypto wallet addresses to that action.

According to the Chainalysis 2026 Crypto Crime Report, IRGC-linked addresses accounted for more than 50% of all value flowing into Iran’s crypto ecosystem in Q4 2025.

Over the full year, those addresses received at least $3 billion.

Any company that does pay the toll without US approval faces another problem. US, EU, and UK sanctions generally prohibit transactions with IRGC-affiliated entities. 

OFAC’s interpretation of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act applies equally to BTC transfers as it does wire payments.

Specifically, a 2022 federal case in Washington DC established precedent that advertising crypto services as “designed to evade US sanctions” can serve as evidence of a sanctions-evasion conspiracy.

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