U.S. sanctions Nobitex and three Iranian crypto exchanges

The U.S. Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control on Monday designated four Iranian cryptocurrency exchanges — Nobitex, Wallex, Bitpin and Ramzinex — accusing the platforms of facilitating terrorist financing, sanctions evasion and payments to ransomware actors.

OFAC said Nobitex, Iran’s largest digital asset exchange, handled more than half of Iranian digital-asset inflows in 2025 and processed transactions tied to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and IRGC-linked ransomware groups. The Treasury alleged Nobitex helped the Central Bank of Iran obtain hundreds of millions of dollars in stablecoins used to support the value of the rial.

The Treasury added that Wallex received about 12% of Iranian digital-asset inflows in 2025 while Bitpin accounted for roughly 10% and faced scrutiny because some investors reported links to sanctions-evasion efforts. Ramzinex, founded in Tehran in 2018, processed more than $2.45 billion in transactions, the department said.

The designations include four individuals connected to Nobitex. The Treasury named chairman and co-founder Amir Hossein Rad, noting he helped reconstitute operations after a $90 million hack in June 2025. Current CEO Seyed Ali Khoee was designated. Two co-founders from the Kharrazi family, which the Treasury described as close to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, were also listed among the designees.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told the Reagan National Economic Forum that the department had recovered about $1 billion in cryptocurrency from Iranian exchanges and wallets since the start of its enforcement campaign. The Treasury cited an April action in which the stablecoin issuer Tether froze $344.2 million across two wallets attributed to the Central Bank of Iran.

The Treasury stated it will continue tracking digital-asset flows as part of an initiative called Economic Fury, which it said aims to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon. The new designations add to U.S. sanctions and enforcement actions targeting Iranian access to the global financial system through cryptocurrencies.

OFAC sanctions generally bar U.S. persons from dealing with designated entities and can cut those entities off from dollar-denominated services and much of the international crypto ecosystem. The Treasury’s action focused on the role exchanges play in moving value into and out of Iran and on alleged links between platform operators and state-affiliated actors.

The measures follow months of intensified U.S. scrutiny, including seizures, freezes and sanctions affecting wallets, exchanges and related service providers tied to Iran’s financial networks.