Iran’s Central Bank purchased half a billion dollars worth of USDT stablecoins

Elliptic, a blog that specializes in tracking cryptocurrency transactions, reports that the Central Bank of Iran has purchased at least 507 million USDT, a cryptocurrency backed by the US dollar.

According to Elliptic’s analysis, until early June 2025, USDT was mainly sent to Iran’s Nobitex exchange and then sent to the cross-chain bridge. In mid-June 2025, the exchange was hacked by pro-Israel hackers.

But from June 2025, the flow of funds changed dramatically: USDT was sent to the cross-chain bridge service to transfer funds from TRON to Ethereum. Subsequently, these funds were exchanged for other cryptocurrencies through decentralized exchanges, transferred between different blockchains and passed through centralized exchanges. This activity continued until the end of 2025.

“There are indications that the purchased USDT was used to support the value of the Iranian rial, providing a viable alternative for market intervention given that sanctions prevent the regime from drawing on official foreign exchange reserves,” the report said.

Elliptic analysts, based on leaked documents from two USDT purchases in April and May 2025, were able to map the broader wallet infrastructure of the Central Bank of Iran, revealing systematic hoarding of USDT.

This figure should be considered as a lower bound on the amount of USDT purchased by CBI, since the analysis only includes wallets that experts were able to attribute to CBI with a high degree of confidence.