CoinEx processed $3.84B for Iran since 2019 while the blockchain called the coordination 📡

Blockchain analytics firm TRM Labs has traced $3.84 billion in flows from wallets linked to more than 60 sanctioned Iranian entities through Seychelles-based exchange CoinEx since 2019, identifying the platform as the largest external conduit for Iran-linked capital entering global crypto markets. Of that total, $2.7 billion moved between CoinEx and Nobitex, Iran's largest domestic cryptocurrency exchange, at an average rate of roughly $1 million per day since 2018. By 2024, CoinEx was Nobitex's largest external counterpart by volume, nearly nine times the next-largest exchange, a concentration TRM Labs called "inconsistent with independent market behaviour."

The report, released Wednesday, found that major Iranian domestic exchanges route between 5% and 10% of their trading volume through CoinEx, a uniformity TRM described as a "coordinated arrangement rather than organic adoption." CoinEx's share of illicit transaction volume sits at nearly 8%, against a 0.3% threshold observed at compliant exchanges. The four Iranian exchanges sanctioned by the US Treasury earlier this month account for 78% of Iran's domestic cryptocurrency volume, according to TRM Labs global head of policy Ari Redbord. Redbord added that CoinEx received $67 million from the Central Bank of Iran and that TRM Labs identified direct on-chain exposure between CoinEx and the Iran Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and its proxies in Palestine and Lebanon.

Mining-pool operator ViaBTC, affiliated with CoinEx, accounted for an additional $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. TRM Labs also reported that Nobitex-linked addresses received mining rewards from ViaBTC and that industrial-scale cryptocurrency mining in Iran is subject to strict government oversight, indicating possible access to state-authorized mining infrastructure or partnerships. Cointelegraph contacted ViaBTC for comment but had not received a response by publication.

The findings landed three weeks after the US Treasury sanctioned four Iranian crypto exchanges as part of its "Economic Fury" campaign, a designation that does not include CoinEx. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent separately confirmed the seizure of $1 billion in crypto from Iranian exchanges and wallets since the start of the war, and US authorities have frozen an additional $344 million in crypto linked to Iran. 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, and in May was reportedly linked to members of a 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 IRGC.

In a statement published Thursday on X, CoinEx denied 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, arguing that onchain fund flows do not demonstrate a platform's knowledge of or participation in illicit activity.