Accumulating 500 million USD worth of USDT in one year! Iran is building a "shadow dollar system" to save the exchange rate and evade sanctions

2026-01-22 15:10:44

According to the latest investigation by blockchain analysis firm Elliptic, the Central Bank of Iran has accumulated at least 500 million USD worth of USDT over the past year through systematic operations. The study suggests that these funds may be used to support the Iranian rial and serve as an alternative channel for settling international trade, effectively creating a “shadow dollar system” that is unaffected by financial sanctions and bypasses the global banking system. Due to long-standing international sanctions, Iran has been unable to connect normally to the global banking system and has been excluded from SWIFT, making cross-border fund transfers and trade settlements highly restricted. Elliptic’s analysis believes that, in this context, the Central Bank of Iran has chosen to hold large amounts of USDT as an alternative to the dollar, used to stabilize the domestic exchange rate and meet foreign trade needs. This report also echoes the investigation published by The Washington Post this month. The paper pointed out that since 2023, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has transferred approximately 1 billion USD through two cryptocurrency exchanges registered in the UK, with the vast majority of transactions settled in USDT. Elliptic further notes that the timing of the Central Bank of Iran’s massive accumulation of USDT coincides with a period of severe domestic economic turmoil. At that time, the rial’s exchange rate against the dollar nearly halved within just 8 months, reaching a historic low. The report speculates that the Central Bank of Iran, possibly through the local exchange Nobitex, bought rial with USDT in an attempt to halt the currency collapse, effectively using cryptocurrencies to perform “open market operations” that would normally be carried out with foreign exchange reserves. The report analyzes that the Central Bank of Iran appears to be establishing a banking mechanism capable of perfectly replicating the functions of a traditional dollar account. Elliptic emphasizes:

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