Iran relaxes foreign exchange controls and allows businesses to use cryptocurrency for cross-border trade

Iran uses cryptocurrency to bypass international sanctions and traditional financial system restrictions, using digital assets as an alternative channel for cross-border settlement and obtaining foreign exchange. (Source: Financial Times)

In response to US sanctions, Iran is relaxing foreign exchange controls and allowing companies to use Tether and Bitcoin for cross-border transactions. By 2025, approximately $10 million worth of cryptocurrency will flow through Iran. Iran accounts for approximately 4.5% of global Bitcoin mining activities, with over $1 billion in unreported earnings and over 20000 individuals and businesses failing to fulfill their export revenue return obligations of € 94 million. Tether has frozen approximately $344 million in wallet assets related to the Iranian central bank. (Source: Financial Times)

Iran tacitly allows businesses to use USDT and Bitcoin for cross-border transactions to circumvent foreign exchange controls, with approximately $10 billion worth of cryptocurrency flowing through Iran by 2025. The Iranian central bank encourages businesses to repatriate overseas funds through cryptocurrency exchanges, allowing them to directly use their export earnings for importing goods. There are over 10 million US dollars of unreported earnings in Iran, and more than 20000 individuals and businesses have failed to fulfill their obligation to repatriate 94 million euros of export revenue. According to Elliptic data, Iran accounts for 4.5% of global Bitcoin mining activities, and Tether has frozen $344 million in assets related to the Iranian central bank. The US Treasury Department has warned that related transactions face the risk of sanctions.

The annualized settlement volume of Visa stablecoins has exceeded $20 billion, a year-on-year increase of over 15 times. Visa has partnered with Credit Coop to implement stablecoin denominated revolving credit limits and automatic repayments through Spigot smart contracts. Over 9000 repayments have been executed on the chain, with a cumulative financing of over $2.5 billion and zero defaults.

Aptos announced that it will conduct its first testnet reset on October 7th, at which point the testnet will return to its initial creation state. All deployed smart contracts, test accounts, token balances, and historical transaction records will be cleared, and developers will need to redeploy the contracts. This reset only affects the testing network, and the main network and development network are not affected. At present, the testnet has processed over 10 billion transactions, and regular resets help to control storage load within reasonable boundaries. The details of the reset strategy have been disclosed in Aptos Labs' AIP-147 proposal.