Circle and Tether freeze Iranian crypto exchange wallet

According to on chain investigator ZachXBT, Circle and Tether, both issuers of USDC and USDT stablecoins, have frozen stablecoin wallet belonging to the Iranian exchange Wallex amounting to $2.49 million of funds.

These funds are now inaccessible. On-chain investigator ZachXBT noted the Wallex exchange had one of its wallet addresses frozen by both Circle and Tether.

The exchange moved some of the funds to another address, with $2.49M in USDT frozen and unable to move further. Circle and Tether reacted to the freeze after ZachXBT tipped them on the addresses belonging to Wallex.

ZachXBT also noted Wallex began consolidating crypto assets from its known hot wallets on TRON and Ethereum. Most of the USDT used in Iran runs on the TRON network, but Ethereum remains an option, as long as the addresses are not flagged.

Reportedly, Wallex bridged multiple assets to BNB Chain, using several bridge apps. BNB Chain is also tracked, but there are fewer reports of locked assets.

This is not the first sanction against Iranian exchanges. The loss is also relatively minor compared to the Nobitex hack in 2025, which took away over $81M.

Prior to this, Chainalysis published a report that showed that nearly 60 percent of top wallets in Iran had withdrawn funds from Iranian crypto exchange yet are still holding these funds, which Chainalysis notes is a move to self custody.
Moreover over 27 percent of the wallets transferred funds to mainstream overseas exchanges which according to Chainalysis is either to liquidate these crypto asset or just take them out of their domestic Iranian crypto exchanges. Smaller portions of the funds have been sent to other services including Iranian exchanges.

Chainalysis in 2025 noted that in Iran cryptocurrency has emerged as a critical financial alternative for many Iranians including the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) which has extensively leveraged digital assets to finance its malign activities both domestically and through its network of networks across the Middle East.

Iran’s crypto ecosystem reached over $7.78 billion in 2025, growing at afaster pace compared to the year prior.