Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent mentioned on Fox Information on Tuesday that the US froze a crypto pockets linked to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps price $130 million, a part of a marketing campaign to trace the property of Iran’s supreme chief all over the world.
“We’re monitoring these accounts everywhere in the world,” Bessent mentioned, in remarks that framed the Treasury work as one prong of an “financial fury” push towards Tehran alongside a blockade. “We froze a crypto pockets linked to the IRGC the opposite day.”
He mentioned investigators had “discovered the cash man for the Ayatollah” and have been tracing the holdings of Ali Khamenei, together with properties he valued at greater than $100 million. Bessent mentioned the Treasury hopes to publish the addresses of these properties. He solid the seizures as a switch of worth to the American individuals and a squeeze on the regime.
Iran’s financial system in ‘freefall’
Bessent additionally described a collapse in Iran’s financial system. He mentioned the rial sits at an all-time low towards the greenback and known as it in “freefall,” with an inflation charge he put “upwards of 180%.” His account tracks the rial slide that has pushed some Iranians towards bitcoin.
The feedback lengthen a Treasury marketing campaign that has run via the struggle between Iran, Israel, and the US. The division has sanctioned Iran’s largest crypto change and mentioned the U.S. has seized $1 billion of Iran’s crypto. Blockchain analysts have tied billions in on-chain flows to IRGC-linked wallets, with such wallets receiving greater than $3 billion in 2025, an increase from over $2 billion the 12 months earlier than.
In a separate transfer, the stablecoin issuer Tether froze $344 million in USDT throughout two blockchain addresses tied to the IRGC, one of many largest single actions within the sequence.
Bitcoin’s design attracts either side of the battle. It settles with out a correspondent financial institution or a reserve-currency issuer, a trait that lets Iran monetize oil entry outdoors the greenback system and lets Treasury hint and freeze worth on a public ledger.
The battle has reshaped how crypto figures into the area. Since U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran started, bitcoin use contained in the nation has surged as residents moved worth out of the banking system.
Tehran, for its half, reportedly moved to simply accept bitcoin from tankers in search of passage via the Strait of Hormuz, a $1-per-barrel toll that turns its grip on the chokepoint into settlement income. The strait carries a fifth of the world’s oil.
The struggle has repriced bitcoin as properly.
Treasury has not revealed documentation of the $130 million pockets freeze or the property addresses Bessent referenced. The inflation and forex figures got here from his remarks quite than from Iranian information.