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Iran's central bank plans to follow its Tether purchase caps with blocks on exchanges' rial accounts
Iran's central bank plans to block rial accounts at some crypto exchanges, after capping Tether purchases in September at 2,000 USDT per user a day. Losing those accounts would strip the exchanges of the local-currency deposits their core business converts into crypto.
The Investor · Invest desk
What happened
- The planned blocks would hit two things: the exchanges' rial-denominated bank accounts holding customer deposits, and the payment gateways that process deposits and withdrawals.
- The September curbs applied only to Tether-rial trading pairs and did not ban users from holding USDT or withdrawing it.
- Tether froze about $344 million in April 2026 and $131 million in July 2026 in wallets linked to the Central Bank of Iran.
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Why it matters
- constraint A block on deposit accounts would stop rial funding at the named exchanges outright, a harder limit than caps that still let users buy and withdraw every day.
- cost Any exchange that is named loses the banking side of its core business of converting rials into crypto, on top of the US sanctions pressure some already face.
- exposure Iranian users would be squeezed at both ends, with Tether able to freeze the tokens and the central bank able to shut the rails used to buy them.
The September rules limited how fast users could buy and left the funding route open. With trading halted from 21:00 to 09:00 Tehran time, the Tether-rial market on a participating exchange was open 12 hours a day [5][1], and the 2,000 USDT daily cap [4] works out to 14,000 USDT per user over a week [2]. Because holding and withdrawal stayed legal [7], a user could buy the day's maximum and move it off the platform.
The account plan goes after the step that comes before any trade. Without the deposit accounts and gateways, users cannot easily put local currency into an exchange [3]. Domestic exchanges have become key on-ramps to dollar-pegged tokens in an economy squeezed by US sanctions [9], and one of the biggest, Nobitex, has been under US sanctions since June 2026 [10].
According to Crypto Briefing, the blocks target "some" exchanges, and the bank's stated reason is market manipulation in Tether trading [1]. The report does not say which ones. One outcome is narrow: a handful of platforms lose their rial accounts while Nobitex and Wallex, the largest venues under the September caps [6], keep theirs. The other reaches those two and perhaps Ramzinex and Bitpin, which adopted similar limits [6]. Only the second removes the local-currency on-ramp at scale. On the evidence reported so far the narrow outcome is the better bet, since the word "some" and a manipulation charge both point at particular platforms. The counter-case is the direction of travel, from rationing purchases in late September [4] to going after the deposits themselves [2].
The bank has also been a buyer of the token it is rationing. Tether's April and July freezes of wallets tied to the CBI add up to about $475 million [3], and Elliptic previously traced more than $507 million to Iranian USDT acquisitions, a figure Crypto Briefing says suggests the central bank itself was buying [12]. If those totals describe the same purchases, the freezes caught no more than about 94% of what Elliptic found [4]. They may describe different wallets. Crypto Briefing's own summary is that the institution now tightening retail access to USDT "appears to have been accumulating it" before Tether froze a large chunk of those holdings [14].
One observation would sink the on-ramp thesis. If Nobitex and Wallex keep their rial accounts and payment gateways, the plan is enforcement against a few platforms, and Iranians can still turn rials into Tether at two of the country's largest venues [6].
What to watch
- Whether the September caps lapse around October 3 for Wallex and October 4 for Nobitex or are extended alongside the account blocks.
- How the rial moves once the blocks take effect.
- Further Tether freezes of wallets tied to Iranian entities beyond the April and July actions.