Iranian entities moved more than $3.84 billion in cryptocurrency through the Seychelles-based exchange CoinEx over the past six years, helping connect Iran's crypto ecosystem to global markets despite US sanctions, The Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday.
CoinEx, the report said, has emerged as the largest foreign counterparty to Iran's biggest cryptocurrency exchange, Nobitex, replacing Binance after the latter tightened sanctions compliance.
The Journal said its reporting drew on blockchain data compiled by blockchain intelligence firm TRM Labs, which traced transactions involving more than 60 Iranian-linked entities.
Wallets with identifiable links to Iran, according to the analysis, transferred more than $3.84 billion through CoinEx since 2019. More than $763 million moved between CoinEx and Nobitex in 2025 alone, making CoinEx Nobitex's largest international counterparty.
The report also traced part of the proceeds from the $1.5 billion Bybit cryptocurrency theft earlier this year to digital wallets attributed to Iran's Central Bank.
Investigators said the funds were routed through multiple blockchains, decentralized finance protocols and unhosted wallets before reaching Nobitex. Ultimately, approximately $67 million was transferred into CoinEx deposit accounts, where it was mixed with other customer funds, making further tracing impossible.
The transactions, the Journal said, illustrate the challenges authorities face in enforcing sanctions through blockchain-based financial systems, where funds can move across multiple networks before reaching centralized exchanges.
CoinEx disputes allegations
CoinEx founder Haipo Yang acknowledged to the newspaper that the exchange had been widely used by Iranian customers but said it had no relationship with the Iranian government.
In a statement issued after publication of the report, CoinEx rejected suggestions that it had knowingly facilitated sanctions evasion or maintained ties with Iranian government institutions.
"CoinEx has never established any commercial relationship with Iranian government-related entities or Iranian domestic exchanges," the company said, adding that it had "never knowingly provided any form of facilitation" to sanctioned individuals or organizations.
The exchange also said it was blacklisted by Iranian authorities in 2021, had never maintained an office in Iran and disputed TRM's methodology for calculating transaction volumes, arguing that blockchain analytics vary between providers.
CoinEx said the transactions involving Alireza Derakhshan, an Iranian accused by the United States of helping run a network that sold Iranian oil, and Zedcex, a London-registered cryptocurrency exchange linked by US authorities to Iranian tycoon Babak Zanjani, occurred before US sanctions were imposed on those entities. Zanjani has described himself as a strategist for the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps' sanctions-evasion operations.
CoinEx also said it had helped freeze accounts linked to the Bybit hack and would conduct an internal review of the transactions highlighted by the newspaper.
Compliance tightened
Yang told the Journal that CoinEx recently stopped accepting new users from Iran and began removing existing Iranian accounts after US sanctions earlier this month targeted Nobitex.
The exchange said it has strengthened sanctions screening, introduced geographic restrictions for Iranian users, enhanced transaction monitoring and expanded customer identification procedures as part of a broader effort to reduce sanctions-related risks.
The Journal said cryptocurrency remains popular among ordinary Iranians seeking to protect savings from the weakening rial, with researchers estimating that about 13% of Iran's population owns digital assets in a market valued at between $8 billion and $10 billion in 2025.
The same infrastructure, the report said, has also become an important channel through which Iranian-linked entities can access the broader global cryptocurrency ecosystem.
