LONDON - Crypto networks closely tied to two major backers of President Donald Trump’s flagship digital currency venture were used by Iran’s central bank and its largest crypto exchange to move at least $2.3 billion since the start of 2023, according to blockchain data.
Some flows have continued during the U.S. war against the Islamic Republic.
Reuters analysed public data from crypto analytics firm Arkham to find that Nobitex, an Iranian exchange used extensively by blacklisted state institutions and ordinary citizens, has processed more than $2 billion on the Tron blockchain since January 1, 2023. Tron was founded by Justin Sun, who has invested tens of millions of dollars in Trump’s digital currency venture World Liberty Financial.
Relations between Sun and World Liberty have since cooled. The tycoon claimed this month that World Liberty secretly implemented a “backdoor blacklisting function” to freeze and restrict his holdings of his World Liberty tokens. In response, the company posted on social media: “See you in court pal.”
Over the same period, Nobitex processed at least $317 million on Binance Smart Chain, a blockchain launched by Binance, the world’s biggest crypto exchange. When an investment firm bought a $2 billion stake in Binance last year, the exchange accepted it in World Liberty’s newly-launched stablecoin.
Since the war started on February 28, at least $22.6 million in Nobitex funds have moved through Binance Smart Chain and at least $550,000 on Tron.
The Arkham data is reported here for the first time.
Four crypto analysts, including two specialists in Iran’s use of digital assets, agreed with the overall figures that Reuters shared with them. One of the Iran specialists, independent researcher and investigator Rich Sanders, said the true volume was likely significantly higher because flows are visible only for addresses known to be owned by Nobitex. The company has publicly said it switches addresses frequently to make tracing and intercepting transfers harder.
Tron and Binance Smart Chain are digital ledgers on which billions of dollars of cryptocurrencies are exchanged. Like other blockchains, both host a variety of crypto tokens, from coins issued by Tron and Binance themselves to so-called stablecoins such as tether whose value is pegged to other assets. The Iran-linked transactions make up a small fraction of these networks’ overall volume.
Among those to use the networks was the Central Bank of Iran, which was sanctioned by the U.S. in 2019 for allegedly providing billions of dollars to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, known as the IRGC, and Lebanon’s Hezbollah.
The central bank last year acquired at least $500 million of tether via the Tron network, according to a report in January by blockchain analysis company Elliptic and the two Iran specialists.
Some $347 million of the total moved through Nobitex using the Tron blockchain, Elliptic founder Tom Robinson told Reuters.
The central bank later converted the tether to different coins and blockchains to cover its tracks, according to Elliptic and the two analysts specialising in Iran. The analysts said one of those blockchains was Binance Smart Chain.
A separate Reuters investigation found that Nobitex is secretly controlled by the sons of one of Iran’s most powerful families, with close ties to the country’s new supreme leader. Under leadership, the exchange has grown from a startup into a central node of a parallel financial system designed to evade Western sanctions.
Since its founding in 2018, Nobitex has processed at least $366 million in transactions linked to sanctioned groups including Iran’s central bank, the IRGC, Hamas and Lebanese Hezbollah, according to Elliptic estimates, which are based on an analysis of sanctioned wallets and those they interact with.
It is illegal in the United States to facilitate transactions for sanctioned entities. While it is unclear whether Tron and BSC were aware their networks were used by Nobitex and Iran’s central bank, the two Iran crypto specialists said the flows were recorded on blockchain tracking software that is standard and widely used among major crypto firms.
Tron was founded by Justin Sun in 2017. The launch of Binance Smart Chain came three years later.
Like other blockchains, transactions on Tron and Binance Smart Chain are governed by operators known as nodes or validators. The operators achieve this status by dint of their large holdings of crypto tokens issued by Tron and Binance. But unlike blockchains such as Bitcoin or Ethereum, where transactions are validated by tens of thousands of nodes, there are only 27 Tron validators and 45 Binance Smart Chain validators. That means that the founders of these blockchains have significant influence over their governance and strategy, analysts say.
The return of Trump to the White House in January 2025 has shaped the fortunes of both Sun and Changpeng Zhao, Binance’s founder and majority stakeholder.
As World Liberty struggled to attract investors after its launch in September 2024, Sun bought tens of millions of dollars worth of World Liberty’s WLFI tokens, lending credibility to the fledgling company. Sun became an adviser to the venture, and later upped his holdings of the tokens to $75 million. Sun has also invested in Trump’s meme coin and has used his crypto platforms to boost USD1, World Liberty’s second cryptocurrency.
As Trump launched a suite of crypto-friendly policies, U.S. regulators paused enforcement actions against cryptocurrency companies and moguls. The Securities and Exchange Commission settled a lawsuit against Sun for alleged fraud in March for $10 million without Sun admitting any wrongdoing.
For its part, Binance has continued to support USD1, enabling its trading with other crypto coins and incentivising users to hold it. It now holds $3.3 billion of the token, Arkham data shows.
Zhao, who stepped down as CEO of Binance and served time in prison in 2024 for violating anti-money laundering laws, was pardoned by Trump in October. Lawyers for Binance and Zhao have said there was no connection between the use of USD1 and the pardon.
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