US Sanctions Nobitex and Three Other Iranian Crypto Exchanges

The U.S. Treasury Department on Tuesday sanctioned Nobitex, Iran's largest crypto exchange, along with three other trading platforms based in the country as part of the Trump administration's "Economic Fury" campaign against Tehran's financial networks. The Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control, better known as OFAC, said Nobitex "processed over 50 percent of all Iranian digital asset inflows in 2025" and was a key player in sanctions evasion, terrorist financing, and transactions linked to Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

It also extended sanctions upon Nobitex's chairman and co-founder, Amir Hossein Rad, current CEO Seyed Ali Khoee, and co-founders Ali and Mohammad Kharrazi, brothers from one of Iran's most politically connected families. A Reuters investigation published last month identified the brothers as relatives of Iran's supreme leadership and reported that hundreds of millions of dollars tied to sanctioned Iranian entities had moved through their exchange.

"While Iran's economy is in free fall, the regime has chosen to co-opt digital asset technologies for its own corrupt agenda, including evading sanctions and transferring wealth out of the country," Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in a statement. Treasury also designated Iranian exchanges Wallex, Bitpin, and Ramzinex, alleging they facilitated transactions to the IRGC and other sanctioned entities.

Nobitex has long been a keystone of Iran's crypto ecosystem and has remained outside Western sanctions despite scrutiny from blockchain analytics firms and lawmakers. Apparently, staying off the OFAC list and staying on it are both full-time jobs.

This comes less than a week after Bessent said the United States had seized roughly $1 billion in Iranian crypto, up from an estimated $500 million that was disclosed in late April. Treasury's announcement Tuesday, however, pointed back to the previous estimates of "nearly $500 million" in crypto assets seized, a number that may be doing its own yield-bearing work between press releases.

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