US Treasury Sanctions BitBank Over Hundreds of Millions in Bitcoin (BTC) Sent to the IRGC

OFAC Sanctions BitBank Over Bitcoin Transfers

The US Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) on Thursday sanctioned BitBank, a Tehran-based cryptocurrency exchange it accuses of moving Bitcoin (BTC) worth hundreds of millions of dollars to Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). Per the official Treasury announcement, the platform is a priority digital assets venture under the control of Babak Zanjani, whom OFAC first designated in January, and the action was issued under Executive Order 13902, the authority that covers Iran's digital asset sector. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent warned that efforts to finance the regime using cryptocurrencies are “not beyond OFAC's reach,” adding that anyone who supports Tehran will face sanctions. The exchange also sat at the center of Iran's maritime toll operation. Since June, the Hormuz Safe Marine Services Authority — the body Tehran uses to sell tankers secure passage through the Strait of Hormuz — has routed its collections through BitBank on to regime entities. That authority was itself sanctioned in July, when the department designated the scheme under which shipping companies paid transit fees settled in Bitcoin. The toll platform first surfaced publicly in May, when Iranian reports said it targeted $10 billion in revenue from bitcoin-settled maritime insurance. Thursday's designations fall under Operation Economic Outcast, announced by Bessent on August 24 as an extension of the earlier Economic Fury drive, under which OFAC blacklisted Nobitex plus three other Iranian exchanges in June, then added Shelbit and Aban Tether in August. Bessent dubbed the campaign's launch Economic D-Day, and Treasury says it aims to cut Iran's remaining economic lifelines, working alongside the EU, the UK and Gulf partners. The practical weight sits in secondary sanctions exposure: a crypto venue in Dubai or a bank in Istanbul processing BitBank flows can find itself severed from the US financial system even though no American touched the transaction, turning the designation into a live compliance burden for any offshore venue serving Iranian customers. OFAC published no wallet addresses alongside the action.

Zanjani's Network and Four More Designations

Zanjani's own history gives the action its cast. He received a death sentence in 2016 over embezzlement at the National Iranian Oil Company, saw it commuted in 2024, and resurfaced last year backing regime-linked ventures. The department first designated him in January and says he has promoted BitBank across his social channels since at least 2024. Treasury describes him as involved in most of the evasion activity it has mapped, including oil exports, and says he has brokered digital-asset deals whose proceeds reached the IRGC. The action covers four more targets alongside the exchange: Pishtaz Simorgh Electronic Trade Company, the firm behind BitBank's software stack and a subsidiary of the already-blacklisted Dot One Value Creation Group, plus three Dot One executives — Hossein Ali Zaker Hossein, Mohammad Mahdi Zaker Hossein and Seyed Adel Heidari. All five were designated under Executive Order 13902, which the administration extended in August to reach any person active in Iran's digital asset sector. Treasury framed the group as central pieces of Tehran's digital-asset sanctions-evasion machinery. Under the order, all US property of the five is now blocked, together with any entity in which they hold a 50%-or-larger stake, and non-US firms dealing with them risk secondary sanctions. Unlike the June and August rounds, which targeted trading venues one by one, Thursday's action reaches the software vendor and the executives behind the infrastructure, not just the venue itself. The June–July transfers were whale-scale even by institutional standards, and the compliance perimeter now extends far beyond Iran: every exchange, OTC desk and payment processor touching the region must screen counterparties against the new list. Traders do not expect relief soon — prediction market odds that Washington ends its naval blockade against Iranian shipping by September 30 sit at 10%, down 30 points, while even a December 31 deadline is only a 60% shot. Readers tracking the market in real time can follow live spot and futures prices on Binance.

Compliance Perimeter Widens Offshore

Read together, the two threads point in one direction: Washington is not trying to censor Bitcoin's proof-of-work network itself, but to close the exchange off-ramps where illicit flows become spendable money. The Treasury press release states that the designations take effect on publication, that all property and interests in property of the five targets located in the US are blocked, and that the measure extends to any entity they own 50% or more of — a final OFAC action, not a proposed rule. Unlike ETF flows, the impact will not surface in market data overnight, but each name added under Operation Economic Outcast shrinks the pool of venues willing to touch Iranian flows. COINOTAG's Bitcoin coverage will track further designations under the campaign.