How Big is Iran's Cryptocurrency Market Really? Tracing Billions of Dollars of Iranian Money on the Blockchain

There is no single, defensible figure for the size of Iran's cryptocurrency market.

Chainalysis reports over $7.78 billion in activity related to Iran's cryptocurrency ecosystem for 2025. TRM Labs states a figure of $9.9 billion for the same year as the volume attributed to Iran. This nearly $2.1 billion discrepancy does not necessarily mean that one of the two companies is wrong; they are measuring one thing using different methods.

On the other hand, none of these figures should be referred to as the trading volume of Iranian exchanges.

The trading volume in an exchange's order book, asset transfers on the blockchain, and estimates of the size of Iran's cryptocurrency ecosystem are three different datasets with three different denominators. Mixing them can create a picture that is several billion dollars larger or smaller than reality.

The monthly report from Mihan Blockchain starts with this differentiation.

Market Snapshot in Tir 1405 {#%D8%AA%D8%B5%D9%88%DB%8C%D8%B1_%D8%A8%D8%A7%D8%B2%D8%A7%D8%B1_%D8%AF%D8%B1_%D8%AA%DB%8C%D8%B1_%DB%B1%DB%B4%DB%B0%DB%B5}

|-------------------------------------------------------------|---------------------------------------------|--------------------------------------------------------------| | Index | Latest Credible Data | Correct Meaning of Data | | Chainalysis Estimate of Iran's Ecosystem in 2025 | Over $7.78 billion | On-chain activity related to identified Iranian services | | TRM Labs Estimate for Iran in 2025 | $9.9 billion | Crypto volume attributed to Iranian entities in the TRM model | | Share of 4 Sanctioned Exchanges in the TRM Model | About $7.7 billion; 78% | Share of attributed crypto volume; not necessarily spot trading volume | | Share of Nobitex from Iran's Inflows in Chainalysis Model for 2025 | 54.2% | Share of on-chain inflows to identified Iranian services | | Share of Wallex in the Same Dataset | 12.7% | On-chain inflow | | Share of Bitpin | 10.4% | On-chain inflow | | Share of Ramzinex | 6.6% | On-chain inflow | | Historical Flow of CoinEx with Sanctioned Iranian Entities | Over $3.84 billion | On-chain flow over 7 years; not a one-month volume | | CoinEx Flow with Nobitex since 2018 | About $2.7 billion | Historical on-chain flow | | Observable CoinEx↔Iranian Exchanges Volume after June 2 Sanction | Less than $150,000 in TRM reported data | Decline in observable on-chain flow, not proof of total cessation of external transfers | | Stablecoin Received by 4 New Addresses Attributed to the Central Bank | $165 million | Total historical received by the addresses | | Frozen Amount in the Same Addresses | $131 million | Blocked balance by Tether |

Sources of the table figures: Chainalysis, TRM Labs, and official documents from the U.S. Treasury Department.

One point about this table is more important than the numbers themselves: No row in the table represents the total trading volume of Iranian users in Tir 1405. Currently, publishing such a number without a consolidated raw dataset from exchanges is not defensible.

The Trading Volume of Iranian Exchanges: What Can Really Be Measured?
Public data from some Iranian exchanges allows for the creation of an independent index.

Nobitex provides historical OHLC market data, market statistics, and Order Book through its public API. The historical OHLC data includes time, opening price, highest and lowest prices, closing price, and the volume of each candle. Order Book version 3 also provides the price and quantity of buy and sell orders without the need for a token.
Wallex also has a public API for Order Book, all markets, and historical OHLC. In the Order Book of this exchange, the price, order quantity, and order value (sum) are provided, and there is a separate endpoint to retrieve the order book for all markets.
This infrastructure is useful for creating independent reports, but it has two serious limitations.

1. Historical Volume Does Not Equal Historical Depth

Historical candles can be retrieved later from the API. The Order Book does not have such a property.
The order book is a snapshot of open orders at that moment. If we did not take a snapshot at 14:00 on July 10, we cannot refer to the API in August to retrieve the order book for 14:00 on July 10. As a result, the current report cannot claim based on today’s data:

• The average spread of Nobitex in July was several basis points;
• The one percent depth of the USDT/TMN market on Wallex during July was how much;
• An order of one billion tomans on average created what Slippage.
  Such numbers can only be published when raw snapshots have been stored in the same month.
  From the next version of this report, this data should be archived continuously.

2. Summing the Volume Column Alone Does Not Create Market Value

In OHLC APIs, Volume is usually reported in the base asset unit. For example, the volume of BTC in the BTC/IRT market is not the same unit as the volume of USDT in the USDT/IRT market. Multiplying the total daily volume by the closing price is only an approximation of Turnover, not the exact value of each transaction.
A more accurate method for future reporting is to use executed transaction data or official quote volume, provided that the endpoint used has complete and verifiable coverage of the transaction period.
For this reason, in this issue, Mihan Blockchain does not publish a figure titled "Total Trading Volume of Iranian Exchanges in July." A number that lacks a clear definition and reproducibility only creates apparent accuracy.
To see the current status and features of domestic platforms, the comparison page of Iranian exchanges on Mihan Blockchain can be used. Real-time prices of various markets can also be viewed in the exchange price comparison service; these real-time data do not replace the historical dataset of the monthly report.
Liquidity; High Volume Does Not Necessarily Mean a Deep Market

For users, liquidity is more important than the declared volume. A market may have a high 24-hour volume, but the spread between the best buy and sell orders may be large, or a few large orders could significantly shift the price.

The liquidity index of Mihan Blockchain should record at least four variables in future reports:

|----------------|---------------------------------------------------| | Criterion | Calculation Method | | Bid-Ask Spread | The distance between the best Ask and Bid relative to the Mid Price | | Depth ±0.5% | The value of orders within half a percent above and below the mid price | | Depth ±1% | The value of orders within one percent above and below the mid price | | Slippage | The change in the average execution price for standard orders |

Standard spread formula:

Spread (bps) = (Best Ask -- Best Bid) / Mid Price × 10,000

These indices should be collected at fixed intervals for markets like BTC/IRT, USDT/IRT, ETH/IRT, and their equivalent in Toman.

The reason for using multiple criteria is clear. A 500 million Toman sell order may have completely different outcomes on two exchanges with nearly identical real-time prices. The difference is determined by market depth, not the last transaction price.

The public APIs of Nobitex and Wallex technically allow for viewing this information at the time of collection.

Tether remains the most important connection point for the Iranian market to digital dollars; with a structural risk {#%D8%AA%D8%AA%D8%B1_%D9%87%D9%85%DA%86%D9%86%D8%A7%D9%86_%D9%85%D9%87%D9%85%E2%80%8C%D8%AA%D8%B1%DB%8C%D9%86_%D9%86%D9%82%D8%B7%D9%87_%D8%A7%D8%AA%D8%B5%D8%A7%D9%84_%D8%A8%D8%A7%D8%B2%D8%A7%D8%B1_%D8%A7%DB%8C%D8%B1%D8%A7%D9%86_%D8%A8%D9%87_%D8%AF%D9%84%D8%A7%D8%B1_%D8%AF%DB%8C%D8%AC%DB%8C%D8%AA%D8%A7%D9%84_%D8%A7%D8%B3%D8%AA%D8%9B_%D8%A8%D8%A7_%DB%8C%DA%A9_%D8%B1%DB%8C%D8%B3%DA%A9_%D8%B3%D8%A7%D8%AE%D8%AA%D8%A7%D8%B1%DB%8C}

In the Iranian market, USDT is not just an asset for trading. Tether simultaneously serves as a pricing unit, a value transfer pathway, and often a practical substitute for dollars for crypto users. This feature makes the analysis of the Iranian market incomplete without examining USDT.

In July 2026, a large sample of the concentrated risk of stablecoins was observed again.

Chainalysis reported on July 15, 2026, that four crypto addresses identified as the Central Bank of Iran were added to the OFAC list, having received a total of $165 million in stablecoins. According to Chainalysis's analysis, $131 million of the balance in these addresses was immediately frozen by Tether.

This figure should not be generalized to the assets of ordinary Iranian users. The addresses in question are attributed to the Central Bank of Iran.

However, the technical mechanism of the matter is the same for all USDT holders: Tether can make tokens in a specific address non-transferable at the contract level.

Mihan Blockchain previously examined this issue in its report on the risk of freezing and blocking Tether for Iranian users. After the sanctions on domestic exchanges, the issue was also analyzed from another angle in the report on the custodial risk of users' assets in Iranian exchanges.

The events of July serve as fresh evidence for the same technical risk, not proof of the claim that Tether will freeze all Iranian assets.

Iran's Crypto Behavior: What Exactly is the $7.78 Billion Figure?
Chainalysis announced in January 2026 that Iran's crypto ecosystem reached over $7.78 billion in 2025. The company also reported that addresses associated with networks linked to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps constituted more than half of the value received by the ecosystem under review in the fourth quarter of 2025.

However, Chainalysis has explicitly stated a significant limitation.

In the report "Geography of Cryptocurrency," the company uses the usual geographic method based on web data for many countries. Iran is not available in this standard dataset. For the Iran section, Chainalysis examined activities related to <> and emphasizes that this data was estimated using a different methodology. For this reason, Iran is not even included in its macro-regional charts. Therefore, a more accurate statement is:

Chainalysis reported over $7.78 billion in identifiable crypto activity related to the Iranian ecosystem in its model for 2025.

The statement <<Iran's crypto market is worth $7.78 billion>> does not result from Chainalysis data.

This distinction should also be observed in older Chainalysis reports. Mihan Blockchain previously covered Chainalysis's report on Iranian exchanges and sanctions; the figures in those reports should also be read with their own methodology and time frame, not as a completely homogeneous time series.

So what is the $9.9 billion figure from TRM Labs?
TRM Labs reported after the sanctioning of four Iranian exchanges in June 2026 that the crypto volume attributed to Iran in its model was approximately $9.9 billion for 2025. According to the same report, Nobitex, Wallex, Bitpin, and Ramzinex collectively accounted for about $7.7 billion or 78% of this attributed volume.

TRM extracts this data from its Entity Attribution. This means that the addresses, services, and flows that TRM attributes to Iranian entities form the basis of the calculation.

An even more interesting point in TRM's method is that the company itself excluded Iran from the country attribution based on SimilarWeb in its Global Crypto Adoption Index Q1 2026, as it considers the web traffic coverage of Iran to be very low and inadequate due to widespread VPN usage. This issue does not seem to be contradictory. The two models are different:

• In dedicated Iran reports, TRM can use entities and addresses attributed to Iran.
• In the web traffic-based geographic model, it excludes Iran due to the poor quality of the geographic signal.

This very difference shows why the statement <<According to blockchain data, Iranians have traded exactly X billion dollars in crypto>> is not defensible without explaining the methodology used.

Chainalysis says $7.78 billion; TRM says $9.9 billion; which is correct?
The answer to this report: neither should be chosen as the <>.

|---------------------------|--------------------------------------------|----------------------------------------------|-------------------------------------------------------| | Provider | 2025 figure | Surveyed community | Main limitation | | Chainalysis | >$7.78 billion | Activities related to identified Iranian services | Iran is outside the standard geography methodology | | TRM Labs | $9.9 billion | Volume attributed to Iranian entities | Dependent on entity attribution and address coverage | | TRM, four sanctioned exchanges | $7.7 billion | Share of entities from the TRM model | Not exchange trading volume | | Treasury/OFAC | >50% for Nobitex, 12% for Wallex, 10% for Bitpin | Iranian digital asset inflows | Based on analytical/attribution data; not exchange trading records |

The U.S. Treasury also stated in its June 2 announcement that over 50% of inflows are for Nobitex, 12% for Wallex, and 10% for Bitpin. This data is also <>.

One of the most common content errors in covering the Iranian market is here: the terms inflow, on-chain volume, attributed volume, exchange trading volume, and market size are used interchangeably.

In the monthly report of Mihan Blockchain, these numbers remain separate.

A significant change in the path of foreign liquidity in Iran
On June 2, 2026, about three weeks before the start of Tir, OFAC sanctioned Nobitex, Wallex, Bitpin, and Ramzinex.

Mihan Blockchain published the reactions of the four Iranian exchanges to the U.S. sanctions at that time. A few days later, CoinEx warned users about direct transfers to these four exchanges.

The TRM data released on July 3 better illustrates the on-chain dimensions of this connection. TRM states that over $3.84 billion in historical flow between CoinEx and sanctioned Iranian entities has been identified over more than seven years. About $2.7 billion of this figure relates to the connection between CoinEx and Nobitex.

According to the same report, after the June 2 sanctions, the observable volume between CoinEx and Iranian exchanges dropped to less than $150,000.

This is one of the most important on-chain signals for inflows into Tir 1405.

However, the interpretation of <<CoinEx's path for Iran is completely closed>> cannot be extracted from this data. TRM itself states that at the time of the report's release, it could not determine whether a new infrastructure had been built to circumvent identification, whether connections through private accounts or intermediaries continued, or whether activities had truly ceased.

On-chain data only shows what is visible and attributable on the chain.

Iran's Market Enters a New Phase with Fresh Risks in Tir

In terms of market structure, the sanctions on four major platforms had potential effects at four levels:

Connection with Foreign Exchanges: Foreign platforms can mark related addresses as AML risk or sanctions exposure. CoinEx's warning was a direct example of this. Mihan Blockchain covered this risk in its CoinEx warning report.

Foreign Liquidity: If direct routes with foreign platforms are limited, market makers and liquidity providers may have to create more pathways between Iran and the global market.

Custodial Risk: User risk is not just the price of cryptocurrency. Access to withdrawals, destination addresses, the status of hot wallets, and interactions with foreign services are also part of the exchange's risk. An independent analysis of this issue was published in the article on the sanctions against Iranian exchanges and custodial risk.

Domestic Price: Any disruption in arbitrage between the Iranian market and the global market could lead to a temporary widening of the spread or the creation of a Premium/Discount in the domestic market. The size of this effect should be measured with actual Order Book data; merely observing price differences at a few moments is not sufficient for conclusions.

Does the data from Tir indicate users moving to personal wallets?

For Tir 1405, there is still no independent public dataset available to calculate the net outflow of Iranian users from exchanges to personal wallets. However, similar behavior has been observed in previous periods.

Chainalysis reported an increase in Bitcoin transfers from Iranian exchanges to personal wallets during the protests in late 2025 and early 2026. After the attacks on February 28, 2026, this company also identified about $10.3 million in crypto outflows from major Iranian exchanges between February 28 and March 2. The destinations included personal wallets, foreign exchanges, DEXs, bridges, and other addresses whose ultimate identities could not be determined.

These data create a historical pattern, but they cannot be directly generalized for Tir.

Key Events of Tir 1405 in a Timeline

June 22: The reporting period begins. The domestic market entered a new month under conditions where four major exchanges had been placed on the U.S. SDN List since June 2.

June 24: TRM Labs published a report linking CoinEx with over 60 Iranian platforms; a historical flow of over $3.84 billion was identified, and TRM reported a significant drop in observable flow following the new sanctions.

July 15: Chainalysis announced that four new addresses attributed to the Central Bank of Iran had received a total of $165 million in stablecoins, and $131 million of their balance had been frozen by Tether.

July 22: The reporting period ends.

What is the size of Iran's cryptocurrency market?

Currently, the most accurate answer is not a single number. To assess the Iranian market, at least four independent layers must be measured:

1. Trading Volume: The value of transactions conducted on domestic exchanges.
2. Liquidity: Spread, order book depth, and slippage.
3. On-chain Flow: Asset transfers to/from services and addresses attributed to Iran.
4. User/Market Footprint: The number of users, assets held, OTC, off-exchange trades, and activities that are not necessarily attributable on the blockchain.

Chainalysis and TRM primarily measure the third layer. Exchange APIs can cover part of the first and second layers. None of them alone equate to the <>. This definition will serve as the basis for future reports by Mihan Blockchain.

Summary of the Report for Tir 1405

The cryptocurrency market in Iran cannot be summarized with a single multi-billion dollar figure for Tir.

The figure of over $7.78 billion from Chainalysis and the $9.9 billion figure from TRM both pertain to the year 2025 and come from different attribution models. Neither represents the trading volume of domestic exchanges in Tir 1405.

Data directly related to the entry conditions of Tir shows a significant drop in observable flow between CoinEx and sanctioned Iranian exchanges. TRM reported this flow to be less than $150,000 following the June 2 sanctions, but simultaneously emphasized that this observation cannot be interpreted as a complete cessation of communication.

In the stablecoin sector, Tir also witnessed one of the largest recent examples of the issuer's freezing power: $131 million in four addresses attributed to the Central Bank of Iran was blocked by Tether. This incident pertains to specific government addresses, not the assets of all Iranian users, but it practically demonstrates the concentrated risk of USDT.

To answer the remaining part of the equation, namely the actual trading volume and the quality of liquidity in the domestic market, an independent dataset from Mihan Blockchain needs to be created. The public APIs of Nobitex and Wallex provide the opportunity to start this measurement; historical trading and price data can be retrieved, but the order book history must be collected and archived from the moment of gathering.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Is a transaction between two users within an exchange visible in on-chain data?

{#faq-question-1786860928823}

Usually not. If the transfer is only conducted within the internal ledger of the exchange and does not create a blockchain transaction, on-chain analysis will not see it as an independent transfer on the network.

Is the trading volume of OTC Iranian exchanges visible in public APIs?

{#faq-question-1786860940655}

Not necessarily. The P2P market API or Order Book only covers that market. To add OTC, there must be an independent and specific source for its volume.

Can the number of Iranian crypto users be calculated from the number of blockchain addresses? {#faq-question-1786860951537}

No. A user can have dozens of addresses, and an exchange address can hold the assets of many users.

Does using a VPN cause errors in estimating the geographical market of Iran? {#faq-question-1786860970753}

Yes. TRM has removed Iran from its country attribution model based on SimilarWeb due to very low coverage and widespread use of VPNs. Chainalysis also calculates Iran outside of its standard geography methodology.

Does freezing USDT mean the token is lost? {#faq-question-1786860977823}

No. The token remains on the address, but the Tether contract can block its transfer. In practice, the holder can no longer spend or transfer the frozen balance.

Is the Market Share reported by a blockchain analysis company the same as the trading market share of an exchange? {#faq-question-1786860986708}

No. If the share is calculated based on inflow or attributed on-chain volume, it only reflects that service's share in that dataset.

Can the dollar volume of a market be calculated by multiplying the daily BTC volume by the closing price? {#faq-question-1786860996826}

An estimate can be made, but this turnover method is not accurate; since each transaction occurs at a different price. Transaction-by-transaction data or Quote Volume is more suitable for a more accurate calculation.

Why might the numbers from Chainalysis and TRM change in future reports? {#faq-question-1786861017975}

Blockchain analysis companies can update their historical Attribution by identifying new addresses, services, and connections. Therefore, each number should be stored with the date received and the version of the methodology.