U.S. Treasury Secretary Announces $1 B Cryptocurrency Seizure from Iran

U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced that the United States will shortly seize $1 billion in cryptocurrency belonging to Iran.

Speaking at Newsmax’s NPolicy Summit in Washington, D.C., on Thursday, Secretary Bessent said that economic sanctions against Iran were proving effective.

Iran has been employing Bitcoin and other digital assets to evade U.S. sanctions. The United States began targeting wallets linked to the Iranian regime in April, Bessent noted.

“What we have done has never been seen before,” Bessent remarked regarding the sanctions.

“We’re likely to seize $1 billion of crypto this week,” he continued. “We know where it is. We are isolating them. We previously had a maximum pressure campaign; now we have an absolute isolation campaign, and it’s working.”

Bessent did not disclose which specific cryptocurrencies the U.S. intends to seize or the method of seizure.

Freezing Iran’s Bitcoin would be extremely difficult, if not impossible, unless the assets are held on a centralized exchange.

Bitcoin’s censorship‑resistant design makes it unfreezable, but many other tokens—such as Tether’s USDT—can be. Secretary Bessent previously indicated that U.S. authorities had seized Iranian assets in the form of that stablecoin.

Earlier this year Iran launched a Bitcoin‑backed insurance service for its counties’ shipping companies.

The Financial Times reported last month that Iran has been using Bitcoin to settle cross‑border transactions via domestic crypto exchanges, following a central‑bank directive urging citizens to take any measures needed to support the economy.

President Donald Trump reinstituted his “maximum pressure” strategy shortly after returning to office. A February 2025 national security memorandum tasked the Treasury with a sustained campaign targeting Iran’s shadow banking, money‑laundering and sanctions‑evasion networks.

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