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US sanctions the bitcoin exchange behind Iran's Strait of Hormuz toll booth

The Treasury says an Iranian exchange moved payments for the authority that charges tankers to cross the strait, and that foreign firms dealing with it now face secondary sanctions.

Assembled by Claude from 9 sources at 8 outlets · Friday, September 18, 2026, Evening edition, 5:16 PM EDT · no human byline

Disclosure. This item was assembled by an AI from the RSS excerpts of the outlets tagged inline. No human wrote or checked it before publication. Feed selection and categories are editorial choices by Teresa Lo. Nothing here is investment advice.

What happened

The US Treasury sanctioned the Iranian digital asset exchange Bitbank, its software developer Pishtaz Simorgh Electronic Trade Company and three other parties intellinews.com. The Treasury said the action was taken over bitcoin transfers to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps bitcoinmagazine.com. It also designated the Iranian financier Babak Zanjani and his software firm; most of the assets frozen at the time of an earlier action were Tether stablecoins digitaltoday.co.kr.

The link to the war is the toll booth. The Treasury said the Hormuz Safe Marine Services Authority, itself already under sanction by the Office of Foreign Assets Control, has used BitBank since June to transfer payments it collects investinglive.com. CoinDesk reported that Iran has spent this year charging tankers between $1 million and $2 million to cross the Strait of Hormuz, and that the Treasury traced those receipts through the exchange coindesk.com. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said efforts to finance the Iranian regime through cryptocurrency were not beyond the reach of the sanctions office northeasttimes.com.

Why it matters to investors

The practical weight of the designation sits in its reach beyond US jurisdiction. The Treasury said all three individuals and both companies named are subject to secondary sanctions, which exposes non-US financial institutions that continue to deal with them iranwire.com. Foreign firms that keep transacting with those parties face secondary-sanctions risk, and BitBank itself has been identified as Iran-based crowdfundinsider.com.

That draws a compliance line through venues and banks with no American presence. The designation also tests the limits of asset freezes across different instruments: stablecoins such as Tether's USDT can be frozen by the company that issues them, while bitcoin, being decentralised and having no single issuer, cannot be blocked the same way bitcoinmagazine.com.

What to watch

Washington paired the designations with a bounty. The United States is offering a reward of up to $15 million for information that disrupts the Revolutionary Guard's financial network and its branches iranwire.com.

Three markers follow. The first is whether exchanges and banks outside the United States change their handling of Iran-linked flows now that secondary-sanctions exposure has been stated explicitly iranwire.comcrowdfundinsider.com. The second is whether the toll payments continue through another route, given that the authority collecting them has been under sanction and switched to the exchange in June investinglive.com. The third is whether tanker operators keep paying to transit at all, since the tolls run into seven figures per crossing coindesk.com.

Sources

  1. bitcoinmagazine.com: Treasury Sanctions Iranian Crypto Exchange BitBank Over Bitcoin Transfers to IRGC (2026-09-17)
  2. intellinews.com: US sanctions Iranian crypto exchange Bitbank over Zanjani links to IRGC - bne IntelliNews (2026-09-18)
  3. investinglive.com: US sanctions Iranian crypto exchange BitBank over IRGC Hormuz bitcoin transfers (2026-09-18)
  4. coindesk.com: Iran's Strait of Hormuz toll booth ran through a bitcoin exchange, U.S. says - CoinDesk (2026-09-18)
  5. northeasttimes.com: Treasury Sanctions Iranian Crypto Exchange Linked To Hormuz Ship Tolls (2026-09-18)
  6. digitaltoday.co.kr: U.S. Treasury sanctions Iranian exchange Bitbank over bitcoin fund moves (2026-09-18)
  7. iranwire.com: U.S. Sanctions Three Iranians, Two Tehran Firms Over Digital Financial Operations (2026-09-18)
  8. iranwire.com: U.S. Offers Up to $15 Million Reward to Disrupt IRGC Financial Network - IranWire (2026-09-18)
  9. crowdfundinsider.com: US Authorities Announce Sanctions Against Iranian Crypto Exchange BitBank Over Alleged ... (2026-09-18)