Iran's central bank bans the country's banks from dealing in cryptocurrencies over money-laundering concerns, as the country tries to halt a currency crisis
DUBAI (Reuters) - Iran's central bank has banned the country's banks from dealing in cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin …
Context & Ripple Effects
Iran's move lands two weeks after India's central bank took a nearly identical step — the RBI barred all financial institutions from serving crypto businesses and individuals — making this the second major-emerging-market bank-level crypto ban within a single month of 2018. Both regulators cite the same fear: that banks become laundering conduits for money fleeing weak currencies.
The longer arc matters more than the ban itself. Iran later restricted mining during power blackouts (mining suspended until September 22, 2021), then by 2022 was reported paying a $10M import order in crypto to route around sanctions — and by 2026 Washington had sanctioned Nobitex, the country's largest exchange, for serving blacklisted state institutions. The 2018 banking ban is the opening frame of a story where the state bans banks from crypto while eventually using crypto itself.
First-order effects
- Iranian banks must sever any crypto exposure immediately, pushing retail and commercial digital-asset activity out of the regulated banking system and toward informal channels and unlicensed exchanges at the height of a currency crisis.
- The Central Bank of Iran joins the RBI as the second G20-adjacent regulator in April 2018 to cut banks off from crypto entirely, hardening the template other central banks with currency pressure can copy.
Second-order effects
- With banks excluded, crypto flows migrate to domestic exchanges operating outside banking oversight — the channel that culminates years later in the US sanctioning Nobitex for allegedly serving Iran's blacklisted institutions.
- Turkey's central bank followed the same playbook in 2021, banning crypto payments outright, showing the Iran/RBI model propagating to other economies defending their currencies against capital flight.
Third-order effects
- The pattern points to a structural split: central banks wall regulated banking off from crypto while the same states quietly adopt crypto for sanctioned trade — Iran's reported $10M import payment being the proof point — leaving enforcement aimed at exchanges rather than banks.
- If the sequence holds, sanctions policy becomes the forcing function for sovereign crypto adoption, with US actions against exchanges like Nobitex becoming the main lever left once banking channels are already closed.
The trend: Central banks are progressively severing regulated banks from cryptocurrencies even as sanctioned states turn to those same assets for cross-border trade, shifting the battleground from bank compliance to exchange sanctions.