Just 12 hours before the United States and Israel began attacking Iran in late February, Firouz, a crypto user in Tehran, decided to act. “I was feeling all week the war would start soon,” he said.Trusting his instincts, he moved all his crypto savings out of Nobitex – Iran’s largest digital asset platform and the central hub of the sanctions-hit country’s crypto ecosystem – to his personal digital wallet. “My main thinking was that I could potentially be forfeiting true ownership of any money left in a state-linked or state-monitored Iranian crypto service in the event of war, whether through an action taken by state authorities or as a consequence of cyberattacks,” he said.Recommended Stories list of 3 itemsend of listIran’s crypto ecosystem was valued at more than $7.78bn last year, growing at a faster pace compared with 2024, according to crypto transaction monitoring firm Chainalysis. But the data suggests it is not just Iranian citizens who have turned to crypto in a bid to offset the impact of rampant inflation and a weakening currency.The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) accounted for about 50 percent of on-chain activity in the fourth quarter, mirroring its dominance in the country’s economy. Harder to trace and easier to transfer than traditional bank payments, crypto offers a way to sell oil, buy weapons and co …
