TRM Labs noted that on April 24, 2026, the US Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) took a significant step in digital asset enforcement by blacklisting two cryptocurrency wallets directly tied to Iran’s Central Bank. The move, which also highlighted connections to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-Qods Force and Hezbollah, triggered an immediate freeze of roughly $344.2 million in Tether’s USDT stablecoin.
Tether worked closely with OFAC and U.S. law enforcement to lock the funds, marking what appears to be the largest on-chain seizure of Iranian state-linked crypto holdings to date.
The sanctioned addresses had quietly accumulated about $370 million through nearly 1,000 separate deposits since March 2021.
According to blockchain intelligence reviewed by TRM Labs, one wallet recorded no outgoing transfers whatsoever, while the second sent out less than $16 million against more than $228 million received.
Combined outflows across both addresses totaled only around $25 million—under 7 percent of total inflows.
TRM Labs pointed out that the limited activity that did occur stayed almost entirely internal: a single $8.6 million transfer moved between the two wallets in January 2022, and the largest external outflows—roughly $11 million across four transactions in early 2023—went to another address within the same network rather than to any recognized exchange.
TRM Labs indicated that no funds flowed to deposit addresses of major trading platforms. Accumulation largely stopped by late 2023, after which both wallets remained dormant until this week’s enforcement action.
This pattern strongly suggests the addresses served as long-term reserve vaults rather than tools for day-to-day operations.
The designation marks the first time OFAC has directly targeted wallets belonging to Iran’s central bank on the blockchain.
It underscores a broader shift in how Tehran has turned to crypto to sidestep traditional banking restrictions.
TRM Labs has monitored this activity for years and notes a consistent institutional playbook: large USDT deposits arrive, are routed through bridges to Ethereum or Binance Smart Chain multisignature custody setups, converted via decentralized finance protocols, and eventually funneled toward centralized exchanges.
The newly sanctioned wallets sit at the very beginning of that pipeline. This latest action fits into a longer sequence of U.S. efforts to disrupt Iran’s crypto-enabled sanctions evasion network.
In January 2026, OFAC blacklisted two UK-registered exchanges—Zedcex and Zedxion—after TRM identified roughly $1 billion in stablecoin flows linked to IRGC-controlled accounts and designated terrorist financiers.
Iran’s domestic crypto economy has remained robust despite these pressures, with trading volumes reaching $11.4 billion in 2024 and $10 billion in 2025.
Platforms such as Nobitex continue to act as key gateways between the country’s local market and regime-linked actors.
For financial institutions and compliance teams, the sanctions carry immediate practical weight.
TRM Labs pointed out that any organization that may have touched these flows—directly or through intermediaries—should now conduct urgent reviews of counterparty exposure.
The move also sends a clear signal. Treasury is no longer limiting its reach to middlemen and exchanges; it is now targeting the sovereign reserve layer itself. TRM Labs concluded in its latest update that as crypto becomes more deeply embedded in state financial strategies worldwide, regulators appear prepared to treat on-chain reserve holdings with the same scrutiny once reserved for traditional bank accounts.