Secret $3.8B Crypto Trail: How Iran-Linked Entities Exploited CoinEx Uncovered by TRM
Ever wonder how a crypto exchange can move billions without stirring the pot—or at least trying to seem like it? Since 2019, CoinEx has quietly handled over $3.84 billion linked to sanctioned Iranian wallets, becoming a major backdoor to dodge U.S. sanctions, according to TRM Labs. Picture this: about 60 Iranian platforms funneling around $1 million daily through a pipeline between CoinEx and Nobitex—Iran’s biggest crypto exchange—since 2018. By 2024, CoinEx wasn’t just a partner; it was Nobitex’s largest external counterpart, nearly nine times bigger than the runner-up. Sounds fishy, right? And with the U.S. Treasury cracking down hard—freezing billions and sanctioning Iranian exchanges—CoinEx’s denials that they’re complicit feel more like a plot twist in a spy thriller than business as usual. The intertwining of these crypto giants hints at a coordinated scheme, not just organic market moves. So, what does this mean for the future of crypto compliance and geopolitics? Let’s dive in. LEARN MORE.
Wallets with identifiable links to sanctioned Iranian entities have moved over $3.84 billion through cryptocurrency exchange CoinEx since 2019, making it one of the main channels used to bypass US economic sanctions, according to blockchain analytics company TRM Labs.
About 60 Iranian platforms were tied to the funds, with $2.7 billion of this flowing between CoinEx and Nobitex, Iran’s largest domestic cryptocurrency exchange, at an average rate of about $1 million per day since 2018, wrote TRM Labs in a Wednesday report.
By 2024, CoinEx was Nobitex’s largest external counterpart, nearly nine times that of the next-largest exchange, a pattern that TRM Labs called “inconsistent with independent market behaviour.”
The report comes three weeks after the US Treasury sanctioned four Iranian crypto exchanges as part of its “Economic Fury” campaign. Days before the sanctions, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the Treasury had seized $1 billion in crypto from Iranian exchanges and wallets since the start of the war.
In a statement published Thursday on X, CoinEx denied having any commercial relationship with the Iranian government or domestic Iranian exchanges and said it has never provided funding channels to sanctioned parties. The exchange also disputed TRM Labs’ interpretation of blockchain data, saying onchain fund flows do not demonstrate a platform’s knowledge of or participation in illicit activity.
Iranian exchanges: CoinEx exposure & share volume, 2025. Source: TRM Labs
Top Iranian exchanges route up to 10% of volume through CoinEx
Most of the major Iranian domestic exchanges route about 5% to 10% of their trading volume through CoinEx, indicating a “coordinated arrangement rather than organic adoption,” according to TRM Labs.
CoinEx’s share of illicit transaction volume is nearly 8%, above the 0.3% threshold found at other compliant exchanges.
Related: US authorities freeze $344M in crypto linked to Iran
CoinEx-affiliated mining pool ViaBTC accounted for another $154 million in traced exposure to Nobitex through mining payouts and supplied emergency liquidity to Nobitex following Predatory Sparrow’s $90 million hack in June 2025.
Cointelegraph contacted ViaBTC for comment on TRM Labs’ findings but had not received a response by publication.
Nobitex was at the center of Iran’s “digital dollar pipeline” and handled about 50% of the country’s crypto trading volume, according to a June 2 report by blockchain forensics platform Chainalysis.
In May, Nobitex was reportedly linked to members of a powerful family with ties to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.
In January, the Office of Foreign Assets Control sanctioned UK-registered Zedcex and Zedxion for being used as front companies for the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).
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