- Central Bank of Iran wallets acquired at least $507 million in USDT.
- Until June 2025 funds largely moved to Nobitex, then shifted through a cross-chain bridge to other blockchains and exchanges.
- The purchases appear linked to efforts to support the rial and create a sanctions-resistant dollar mechanism.
- Blockchain tracing enabled identification and led to blacklisting that froze about $37 million in USDT.
Elliptic traced a cluster of crypto wallets used by the Central Bank of Iran that acquired at least $507 million in USDT during April–May 2025, with payments made in Emirati dirhams. The activity concentrated on the Tron network before later moving through a cross-chain bridge to Ethereum and other venues.
Most of the USDT flows were routed to Nobitex, Iran’s largest crypto exchange, where the stablecoins could be held, traded for other cryptoassets, or sold for rials. From June 2025 the pattern changed: funds were sent to a cross-chain bridge, converted on decentralized exchanges, and moved across blockchains and centralized venues through late 2025.
On June 18, 2025, the pro-Israel group Gonjeshke Darande (Predatory Sparrow) hacked Nobitex, stealing about $90 million in cryptoassets and, according to the group, destroying the funds by sending them to an inaccessible wallet. The group said the exchange “…is at the heart of the regime’s efforts to finance terror worldwide, as well as being the regime’s favorite sanctions violation tool.”
Public records and leaked purchase documents suggest the central bank used USDT to inject dollar liquidity into domestic markets and to replicate international dollar accounts outside the formal banking system. Reports linked to this motivation are available here. The bank also appears to be building a closed-loop trade mechanism for “synthetic dollars,” a model that was formally authorized in August 2022.
Because stablecoins run on public blockchains, these flows are visible to analytics tools, and issuers can block wallets. On June 15, 2025 several wallets tied to the bank were blacklisted, freezing roughly $37 million in USDT.
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