Iran central bank purchased over $500M in USDT amid rial crisis

Beincrypto reports that crypto security firm Elliptic found Iran’s central bank secretly purchased more than $500 million in Tether’s USDT during 2025 as the rial crisis deepened.

Elliptic said it identified a network of wallets it attributed to the Central Bank of Iran that accumulated at least $507 million in USDT during 2025, a figure the firm described as a lower bound because it includes only wallets attributed with high confidence. Leaked documents showed two USDT purchases in April and May 2025 paid for in UAE dirhams, and Elliptic mapped a systematic accumulation that initially routed much of the USDT into Nobitex, where the tokens could be converted into rials as a parallel dollar reserve.

After a June 18, 2025 hack of Nobitex that Elliptic said removed about $90 million and was carried out by the pro‑Israel group Gonjeshke Darande, the flow shifted to cross‑chain bridges, moving assets from TRON to Ethereum, swapping on decentralized exchanges and routing through other platforms through the end of 2025. Local claims by businessman Babak Zanjani that wallet addresses were quickly exposed have raised questions about a possible information breach or monitoring, but those allegations remain unproven and have intensified calls for transparency.

Key Topics

Crypto, Usdt, Elliptic, Nobitex, Gonjeshke Darande, Babak Zanjani