U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has said the American authorities will soon seize $1 billion in crypto from Iran.
Speaking on Newsmax’s NPolicy Summit in Washington, D.C. on Thursday, Bessent added that economic sanctions on the Middle Eastern country were working.
Iran has been using bitcoin — and other cryptocurrencies — to skirt around U.S. sanctions. The U.S. in April started targeting crypto wallets linked to the Iranian regime, Bessent said at the time.
“What we have done has never been seen before,” Bessent said Thursday on Iranian sanctions.
“We’re probably going to seize $1 billion of crypto this week,” he continued. “We know where it is. We are isolating them. We did have a maximum pressure campaign, now we have an absolute isolation campaign and it’s working.”
Bessent didn’t reveal what cryptocurrencies the U.S. will seize or how.
It would be very hard — if not impossible — for the U.S. to freeze Iran’s bitcoin unless it keeps it on a centralized exchange.
Bitcoin, being censorship resistant, cannot be frozen. But many other cryptocurrencies, including Tether’s USDT, can. Bessent previously said the feds had seized Iran’s crypto in the form of the popular stablecoin.
Iran started a bitcoin-backed insurance service for its counties shipping companies earlier this year.
The Financial Times last month reported that the Middle Eastern country was using bitcoin to settle cross-border transactions through Iranian crypto exchanges after the central bank advised its countrymen to do anything necessary to help the economy.
U.S. President Donald Trump revived his “maximum pressure” campaign weeks after returning to office. A national security memorandum signed in February 2025 put the Treasury on a sustained campaign against Iran’s shadow banking, money laundering and sanctions-evasion networks.