The U.S. Treasury Department on Friday sanctioned two Tron wallet addresses linked to Iran's central bank, Bank Markazi, with onward ties to the IRGC-Qods Force and Hizballah. Tether, working with the Office of Foreign Assets Control and U.S. law enforcement, froze approximately $344.2 million in USDT held across the two addresses. [1][2] OFAC designated the addresses themselves — adding crypto wallets directly to the SDN list — and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced the action on X. "We will follow the money that Tehran is desperately attempting to move outside of the country and target all financial lifelines tied to the regime," he wrote. [3]

The on-chain history is the part the wires undersold. TRM Labs' Friday analysis showed the two wallets received roughly $370 million across approximately 1,000 transactions since March 2021, and that one address has zero outbound transfers while the other moved less than $16 million out against more than $228 million in. The behavioral profile is sovereign reserve storage, not operational payments — accumulation that concluded in late 2023 and sat largely dormant until this week. [2]

The artifact is a Treasury secretary putting a sanctions-enforcement number on his personal X account on a Friday afternoon — the same Bessent who told the Senate Wednesday that "many" Gulf allies have requested currency swap lines. [4] The secondary-financial front the Hengli refinery designation opened Tuesday now extends through the on-chain layer. Tether is, in operational terms, a dollar-denominated sanctions instrument with a counterparty list.

-- DARA OSEI, London