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Jennifer Hansler
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Sean Lyngaas

Updated 10 min ago

Updated Apr 24, 2026, 3:52 PM ET

PUBLISHED Apr 24, 2026, 12:00 PM ET

The Middle East Crypto Investing

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A billboard with a picture of Iran’s flag on a building in Tehran, Iran, on January 24, 2026.

Majid Asgaripour/Wana News Agency/Reuters

The Trump administration has frozen $344 million in cryptocurrency it says was linked to Iran as the United States ratchets up pressure on Tehran.

The move, first reported by CNN, comes as shaky diplomatic efforts to reach a deal to end the war continue to stall and the global economy reels from its impact. The administration has sought to increase economic pressure on Iran during the tenuous ceasefire. It’s unclear if the large sum of money seized will have an impact on Tehran or its approach to the war and negotiations.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Friday that the agency “is sanctioning multiple wallets tied to Iran.”

“We will follow the money that Tehran is desperately attempting to move outside of the country and target all financial lifelines tied to the regime,” he said in a statement.

The Iranian mission to the United Nations declined to comment.

On Thursday, Tether, a digital currency company that facilitates crypto transactions around the world, announced it had “supported the US government in freezing” $344 million in cryptocurrency across two addresses, after information was shared “by several U.S. authorities about activity tied to unlawful conduct.”

A US official told CNN that the government had information linking the currency to Iran.

“Working with blockchain analytics experts, the US government has observed evidence of material links to the Iranian regime, including confirmed transactions with Iranian exchanges and a series of transactions routed through intermediary addresses that interact with Central Bank of Iran-associated wallets,” the official said.

CNN has not independently corroborated that the Tether accounts were linked to Iran.

“The Central Bank of Iran (CBI) has used increasingly complex methods to obfuscate its involvement in cross-border transactions using digital assets, as they seek to stabilize the rial and facilitate international trade in an increasingly restricted environment,” the US official said Friday.

The Treasury Department “maintains an active dialogue with numerous US and foreign financial institutions, including digital assets exchanges,” the official said.

Heavily sanctioned regimes like Iran, Russia and North Korea have increasingly turned to cryptocurrency, which is less regulated that the traditional banking system, to generate revenue and skirt sanctions.

Cryptocurrency holdings in Iran reached $7.8 billion in 2025, growing at a faster rate for most of the year than in 2024, according to crypto-tracing firm Chainalysis. Iran’s powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps accounted for roughly half of those holdings on the blockchain in the last quarter of 2025, “mirroring its dominance in Iran’s economy more broadly,” Chainalysis said.

“When these wallets were regularly active several years ago, they engaged in frequent, large transfers of up to tens of millions of dollars, largely with other private wallets,” Chainalysis said in a statement to CNN on Friday, referring to the Tether accounts the US government that were frozen. “These patterns are consistent with how we’ve observed other known IRGC wallets move funds on chain.”

Daniel Tannebaum, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, said that the freeze of the assets is “meaningful,” but given how sanctioned Iran is, “I don’t think it necessarily moves the needle for thwarting Iran’s attempts to continue operating in the state of the conflict as it is right now.”

Iran has been sanctioned for decades and has put mechanisms in place to adapt, he said. Some countries have continued to do business with Iran despite the sanctions.

“The way to get at Iran at this point, because Iran is truly sanctioned out, is to go with the third country actors enabling them,” including China, he told CNN.

Later on Friday, the Treasury Department imposed sanctions on a China-based independent teapot refinery for purchasing billions in Iranian petroleum.

Tannebaum also noted that Iran has “been leveraging crypto-related funds for years.”

“They will use it with actors that are trying to stay outside of the US banking system,” said Tannebaum, who is also a partner at Oliver Wyman. Iran is “really trying to use any methods they can to pay for additional armaments, military support that they need at present.”

Last year, hackers widely believed to be operating in support of or on behalf of Israel stole the equivalent of about $90 million from Iran’s largest cryptocurrency exchange amid Israeli military strikes on Iran.