Remember earlier this summer when there was that scammy "safe passage" webpage that claimed to accept bitcoin on behalf of Iran for ships that were paying the toll to pass the Straight of Hormuz? #1491815 #1491910 I thought it was just some AI scam somebody pulled, but apparently
Iran was actually accepting bitcoin for tolls
Since June of this year, OFAC-designated Hormuz Safe Marine Services Authority has used BitBank to transfer payments it received to the Iranian regime. The action directly strikes at the architecture Zanjani built to launder funds and transfer hundreds of millions of dollars in Bitcoin to the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, including digital asset platforms and their supporting developers.
It seems pretty amazing to me that this was actually happening.
Between June and July of this year, Zanjani utilized BitBank to facilitate the transfer of hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of Bitcoin to the IRGC. The developer of BitBank’s digital assets software is Pishtaz Simorgh Electronic Trade Company (Pishtaz Simorgh), a subsidiary of OFAC-designated Dot One Value Creation Group (Dot One).
I will be very curious to see how effective these sanctions are. It would also be pretty cool to see if we could find these addresses on chain.
Amaaaaazing
The way I read this is that the underlying action that OFAC doesn't like, is that the Bitcoin was converted back into greenbacks? That's why they say it's
laundering? So if they (Hormuz Safe) would not convert their ill-gotten Bitcoin back into dollars, there is no case?This may be a good thing to think about.
I'm much more interested in the bitcoin payment side of this story than I am in the conversion. I would love to know if
From a Coindesk article about this:
There's also an interesting TRM Labs article about the sanctions, but it doesn't publish any specific addresses, although they do publish a lot more info about the thing the "Dot One ecosystem"
What would you love to know? Your sentence was cut off.
Re: those articles, especially the TRM one, makes me wonder: why are all these state operators shitcoiners? Is there a book
The Shitcoin Standardthat we all ignored?Ah! I just realized I somehow chopped the end of that sentence.
I would love to know if there is anyone who has identified an actual bitcoin address that is linked to one of these transactions.
I tried a little digging last night to see if Bitbank had a known exchange address or something like that, but didn't uncover anything.
We could ask the question from that angle or we could ask why they aren't using bitcoin. Perhaps they are just thoughtless, ignorant bureaucrats who don't understand why they should be using censorship resistant money, or perhaps there is some practical reason that sending beaver tokens on Tron or whatever was more expedient for them.
Same as the Revolut hackers asking for a monero bounty. The customer, though ignorant, is always right. I want to know what pulled them toward monero and away from bitcoin. Is it some claim of privacy or are they afraid that their bitcoin will be too trackable because they don't know how to move it privately?
Did anyone track these transactions on chain? It seems like they'd be large enough to be noticeable.
Yeah. I'm waiting for some evidence before I believe it.
I suppose the Treasury Dept could be using it as an excuse, but you'd think they'd have done a least a little research before claiming "hundreds of millions of dollars in bitcoin"
I would not think that.
well, dammit, i let my confirmation bias get the best me on this one.
No fan of Iran, obviously, but this is bitcoin doing what bitcoin was meant to do. This is a positive for bitcoin, even if it turns off some normies.
Do you know the history of Iran?
The CIA removed their democratically elected government in the 1950s in order to steal their oil.
Watch this doco and learn the history behind the current conflict -
Good on Iran for using Bitcoin to avoid the illegal sanctions imposed by the Zionist owned US petrodollar hegemony.
why they stopped? or this is still happening?
US Dept of Treasury claims it has happened and (I think) still is, but others question the veracity of Treasury's claims.