US Treasury sanctions Nobitex, Wallex, Bitpin and Ramzinex in latest Iran crypto crackdown

The US Treasury has sanctioned four Iranian crypto exchanges, including Nobitex, the country’s largest, as part of its “Economic Fury” campaign aimed at cutting Iran off from the financial system. For high-risk PSPs, the practical point is simple: the OFAC list is now explicitly reaching into local crypto rails that sit between sanctions evasion, value transfer, and payment access.

1. On Tuesday, the Treasury added Wallex, Bitpin and Ramzinex to the Office of Foreign Assets Control’s sanction list, which prohibits US businesses and persons from providing services to those platforms. Nobitex was already named as the centerpiece of the action, with the Treasury describing it as Iran’s largest exchange.
2. Scott Bessent said Iran’s leadership has co-opted digital asset technologies “for its own corrupt agenda,” including evading sanctions and transferring wealth out of the country. He also said Treasury will continue to follow the money “whether it is through the banking system or through digital assets” to prevent the regime from developing a nuclear weapon.
3. The campaign called “Economic Fury” commenced on April 14, months into the Iran war that began with joint US-Israeli strikes in February. The Treasury said the latest sanctions come four days after Bessent disclosed that nearly $1 billion in crypto had been seized from Iranian crypto exchanges and wallets since the war began.
4. Chainalysis said Nobitex is at the center of Iran’s “digital dollar pipeline” and handles about 50% of the country’s crypto trading volume. The Treasury said Nobitex has continued to facilitate payments for the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and other sanctioned entities, and that its CEO, Seyed Ali Khoee, and chairman Amir Hossein Rad were also added to OFAC’s sanction list.
5. The Treasury said it has cut off “tens of billions of dollars” worth of funding channels from being accessible to the Iranian regime and its proxies, including through action against alleged shadow bank networks and foreign officials and companies supporting Iran’s oil trade and military activities. For payment providers, that is the usual reminder that crypto exposure is not just about wallets and exchanges; it is also about counterparties, beneficial ownership, and where the fiat on- and off-ramps sit.

The Treasury also tied the action to broader pressure around Iran’s nuclear programme and the Strait of Hormuz, a shipping lane that transits about one-fifth of the world’s oil. In other words, this is sanctions policy with both financial and geopolitical spillover, which is exactly the sort of mix that makes compliance teams earn their keep.