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Iran has made crypto a de facto trade settlement rail. FT reports Iran's central bank has loosened enforcement of rules that once forced exporters through state FX channels. Exporters can now repatriate earnings through domestic crypto exchanges using USDT, BTC and other digital assets, then use export proceeds to finance imports directly. No forced sale through official-rate rails. One industry executive told the FT that receiving export payments in crypto has become "completely normalized." The scale is real: · TRM Labs tracked $9.9B in Iran-attributed crypto volume in 2025 · OFAC-designated Nobitex, Bit Pin, Wallex and Ramzinex handled about $7.7B, or 78% of that volume · USDT on Tron remains a key rail for dollar exposure without a dollar bank account · Iran also mines BTC, though estimates of its global hashrate share vary widely The US is pushing back hard. Under Operation Economic Fury, US officials say they have seized about $1B in Iranian crypto, while Treasury says actions have frozen nearly half a billion dollars in regime-linked crypto. In June, OFAC designated four major Iranian exchanges. In April, Tether froze $344M in USDT across two addresses in coordination with US authorities. That is the structural tension. USDT is fast, liquid and dollar-linked, but it has an issuer-level freeze function. Bitcoin does not. The more Iran-linked trade depends on USDT, the more it remains exposed to sanctions enforcement through the same dollar-linked system it is trying to work around. This is the live test: can crypto act as neutral trade infrastructure under sustained geopolitical pressure, or do issuer-controlled stablecoins become another enforcement layer of the dollar system? Which matters more in a world like this: settlement speed or censorship resistance? #IranCryptoTrade