CoinEx Calls $3.8B Iran Flow "Just Users" as TRM Hands Treasury the Receipts 🧾

Blockchain analytics firm TRM Labs has traced $3.84 billion in cryptocurrency flows from wallets linked to more than 60 sanctioned Iranian entities through Seychelles-based exchange CoinEx since 2019, identifying the platform as the single largest external conduit for Iran-related capital moving into global crypto markets. Of that total, $2.7 billion moved directly between CoinEx and Nobitex, Iran's largest domestic exchange, at an average pace of roughly $1 million per day since 2018. By 2024, CoinEx was Nobitex's largest external counterparty by volume, nearly nine times the next-largest exchange, a concentration TRM Labs called "inconsistent with independent market behaviour." The report, published Wednesday, comes three weeks after the US Treasury sanctioned four Iranian crypto exchanges as part of its "Economic Fury" campaign, with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent separately confirming the seizure of $1 billion in crypto from Iranian exchanges and wallets since the start of the war. CoinEx is not among the entities sanctioned so far.

TRM Labs' findings detail a pattern the firm described as a "coordinated arrangement rather than organic adoption." Major Iranian domestic exchanges route between 5% and 10% of their trading volume through CoinEx, and the exchange's share of illicit transaction volume sits at nearly 8%, against a 0.3% threshold observed at compliant exchanges. TRM Labs global head of policy Ari Redbord said CoinEx "has functioned as the backbone of Iran's cryptocurrency ecosystem for seven years, processing nearly USD 4 billion across more than 60 Iranian platforms," adding that the four sanctioned exchanges, including Nobitex, account for 78% of Iran's domestic cryptocurrency volume. The report also alleges that CoinEx received $67 million from the Central Bank of Iran and that CoinEx-affiliated mining pool ViaBTC accounted for an additional $154 million in traced exposure to Nobitex through mining payouts, including emergency liquidity supplied to Nobitex following Predatory Sparrow's $90 million hack in June 2025. Nobitex handled about 50% of Iran's crypto trading volume, according to a June 2 report by blockchain forensics platform Chainalysis, and was reportedly linked in May to members of a family with ties to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.

In a statement published Thursday on X, CoinEx rejected the characterization, saying it "firmly reject[s] any narrative that conflates ordinary user activity with state-level sanctions evasion, and any inference that equates on-chain fund flows with platform knowledge of, support for, or participation in illicit activity." The exchange said it has no commercial relationship with the Iranian government or domestic Iranian exchanges and has never provided funding channels to sanctioned parties. CoinEx added that it moved quickly after Nobitex was sanctioned to strengthen identification of Iranian users, implement comprehensive geo-fencing, detect suspicious transactions, and step up action against accounts using the platform for illicit activity. Cointelegraph contacted ViaBTC for comment on TRM Labs' findings but had not received a response by publication. 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).