Placing crypto alongside shadow banking and weapons procurement means Treasury believes it is being used for actual trade settlement.

US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent posted on X on April 29 that Washington’s sanctions campaign is now going after Iran’s “access to crypto,” alongside oil exports, shipping networks, and shadow banking channels.

It is the first time the Treasury has named digital assets so explicitly in the context of the Iran pressure campaign, and it puts crypto squarely in the middle of a geopolitical dispute that has already been moving Bitcoin’s price for weeks.

Treasury Links Crypto to Iran Sanctions Push

In the post, Bessent said the…