Iran’s Crypto Economy Explodes Past $7.78B Amid Protests, Wars, and Sanctions

From missile strikes to protests, political shocks in Iran repeatedly caused crypto spikes.

Iran’s cryptocurrency ecosystem reached a total value of more than 7.78 billion in 2025, growing faster during the year compared to 2024, according to a new report by blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis.

This growth has occurred due to intensifying political, economic, and security pressures on the country, including sanctions, inflation, domestic unrest, and growing regional conflicts.

Wars, Protests, and Emerging Currency

In its latest report this week, Chainalysis said Iran’s crypto activity has consistently followed major political and world events. On-chain transaction volumes have increased during periods of heightened volatility. The report identified several such episodes.

These include the January 2024 bombings in Kerman that killed nearly 100 people at the memorial of former IRGC-Quds Force commander Qasem Soleimani, Iran’s missile attack against Israel in October 2024 following the assassination of Hamas leader Isma’il Haniyeh in Tehran and Hezbollah leader Hasir Nasura, and a junior leader of Hezbollah Hasir Nasura, and Hasir Nasura. The 12-day conflict in June 2025, in which Iran’s long-running shadow war with Israel escalated.

That June conflict occurred at the same time as joint US-Israeli strikes on Iran’s nuclear and ballistic missile infrastructure, cyberattacks on Nobitex, Iran’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, and Bank Sepah, the country’s oldest bank and an institution heavily used by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), and the hacking of Iranian state television channels.

Chainalysis found that the overall crypto activity in Iran has not only grown year on year, but has done so at a faster pace than last year. This proves the role of crypto as an alternative form of finance and a response to the economic crisis that has been planned, including an estimated inflation of 40-50% and the rial which has fallen by almost 90% since 2018.

The crypto Footprint of the IRGC

A major finding of the report was the growing dominance of the IRGC in Iran’s crypto economy. Addresses associated with IRGC-linked auxiliary networks accounted for more than 50% of the total amount received in the entire Iranian crypto ecosystem in the fourth quarter of 2025. The volume of funds received by IRGC-related addresses was over $2 billion in 2024 and increased to over $3 billion in 2025.

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Chainalysis, however, acknowledged that these figures represent a low estimate based only on wallets that have been publicly identified for sanctions by the US Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control and Israel’s National Counter-Terrorism Financing Office.

The company said the real estimate is greater, considering the potential use of shell companies, undisclosed facilitators, and anonymous funds tied to IRGC operations, including illegal oil sales, sanctions evasion, money laundering, and support for regional proxy groups. The report also revealed a change in the behavior of ordinary Iranians during the recent mass protests, especially between late December 2025 and early January 2026, when the internet was blacked out.

During this period, Chainalysis found a significant increase in daily exchange rates and personal wallet transfers, in addition to a significant increase in Iranian withdrawals to personal Bitcoin wallets. According to the report, this trend shows that many Iranians are turning to Bitcoin as a means of self-preservation and saving money amid the currency collapse and political uncertainty.