U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the United States will “likely” seize $1 billion worth of cryptocurrency this week, as part of a tightening of measures related to sanctions imposed on Iran.
Bessent made the remarks while speaking at the Newsmax Policy Summit on Thursday. He explained that the seizure is part of a broader effort to economically isolate Iran amid the latest round of military conflict, which began in February.
The minister did not specify whether the targeted digital assets were linked to particular trading platforms, or whether the seizures would result from action by stablecoin issuers. He also said: “We know where they are, and we are isolating them.”
These remarks follow an announcement in August by the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control, known as OFAC, that it was targeting cryptocurrency platforms it said were facilitating the transfer of funds to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Quds Force.
At the time, Bessent said Washington intended to increase economic pressure on Iran, focusing on financial networks that fund the regime “in dollars, rials, or digital currencies.”
The U.S. Treasury Secretary also expressed a similar position in an earlier interview in April, when he said authorities had seized $500 million in digital assets linked to Iran.
Separately, Tether said in September that it had frozen $550 million worth of USDt (USDT) under U.S. sanctions on Iran, including $344 million in April alone.
These developments highlight the growing role of financial sanctions in tracking digital assets linked to restricted entities, while also increasing scrutiny of platforms and wallets that may be part of these networks or through which transfers pass.
For the broader market, such actions could make traders more sensitive to compliance risks, particularly when seizures involve large sums and rely on tracing financial flows through digital-asset infrastructure.