Written by: Xiaobing, Deep Tide TechFlow

On April 8, the Financial Times published a report stating that Iran is demanding that oil tankers passing through the Strait of Hormuz pay their tolls in Bitcoin.

The source is Hamid Hosseini, a spokesman for the Iranian Oil, Gas and Petrochemical Exporters Union. He told the FT that tankers must first send an email reporting their cargo information, after which Iran assesses and quotes a price of $1 per barrel of crude oil. A fully loaded VLCC (Very Large Crude Carrier) carrying 2 million barrels would incur a transit fee of $2 million.

Payment method: Bitcoin. Hussein stated, "Payments are completed within seconds, ensuring they cannot be traced or confiscated due to sanctions."

The consequences of not paying are clear. According to the FT, VHF radio broadcasts in the Strait warned: "Any vessel attempting to pass without permission will be destroyed."

A country under comprehensive sanctions has set up a Bitcoin tollbooth on the world's most important oil shipping route.

How are toll booths built?

In late February 2026, the US and Israel launched a joint attack on Iran, which responded by closing the Strait of Hormuz. Data from S&P Global shows that tanker traffic through the strait plummeted by 97%.

It's important to understand the significance of this strait: before the war, 100 to 120 merchant ships passed through daily, and about one-fifth of the world's crude oil passed through here. Closing it caused oil prices to skyrocket, and the global economy trembled.

But as time went on, Iran realized that "locking down" was not as effective as "taking over".

Since mid-March, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has been operating an informal toll collection system. Ship owners need to submit detailed information to an intermediary affiliated with the IRGC: vessel ownership records, flag registration, cargo manifest, destination port, crew list, and even AIS tracking data. Once approved, the IRGC issues a one-time coded permission code and route instructions, guiding the vessel along the northern coastline of Iran, escorted by patrol boats.

From March 30 to 31, the Iranian parliament formally passed the "Strait of Hormuz Management Plan," enshrining the system in law. Fees are denominated in rials, but payments in "digital currency" are authorized.

By the time the US and Iran reached a two-week ceasefire agreement on April 7, the system had been operating for at least three weeks.

Hours after the ceasefire agreement was announced, Hussein revealed new details in an interview with the Financial Times: tolls would be paid in Bitcoin. His reasoning was to "ensure it cannot be tracked or confiscated due to sanctions."

BTC or USDT: A Choice Regarding Sovereignty

Hosseini's statement has two major technical flaws. Bitcoin transaction confirmation takes several minutes, not "seconds." Every transaction on the Bitcoin blockchain is publicly traceable, and companies like Chainalysis and TRM Labs make their living by tracking Iranian on-chain funds. OFAC already sanctioned Iranian Bitcoin wallets back in 2018.

But he was right about one thing: Bitcoin settlements don't go through the US correspondent banking system, so OFAC can't freeze it the moment the transaction occurs. Post-transaction tracking is one thing; real-time interception is another. For a $2 million toll, "post-transaction" is already too late.

TRM Labs' report provides a more complete picture. In recent years, IRGC has been more frequently used with stablecoins like USDT. Zedcex and Zedxion, two exchanges sanctioned by OFAC in January 2026 alone, handled approximately $1 billion in IRGC-related funds. Chainalysis's "Crypto Crime Report 2026" shows that in Q4 2025, IRGC-related addresses accounted for more than half of all crypto inflows into Iran, exceeding $3 billion.

The problem is that stablecoins have backdoors.

Both Tether and Circle can freeze addresses. In mid-2025, Tether executed the largest-ever freeze on Iranian-related funds.

This is the logic behind the Hormuz tollbooth's choice of Bitcoin. Daily trade settlements using USDT are fine—small amounts, high frequency, and fast. But the Iranians won't accept a single toll of $2 million collected using a tool that the issuer can freeze at any time.

Bitcoin has no administrators, no freeze button. A slogan that crypto geeks have been chanting for fifteen years has become a real need for a nation in the Strait of Hormuz.

Bloomberg's previous report also mentioned a third payment option: the RMB, processed through Kunlun Bank via the CIPS system, bypassing SWIFT. In reality, Iran offered ship owners a menu: those with good relations with China could use the RMB, while those who could use anyone could use Bitcoin.

Iran has also implemented a five-tiered system of national classification, with lower rates for "friendly" countries and vessels affiliated with the United States or Israel being refused passage. Some operators have already re-registered their vessels with Pakistan to obtain passage rights.

$800 million per month, comparable to the Suez Canal

TRM Labs estimates that if traffic returns to normal, tankers alone could generate $20 million in revenue per day, or $600 million to $800 million per month. Adding LNG and other cargo ships, the total exceeds $800 million.

For reference: the monthly income during peak years in the Suez Canal era was around this level.

Iranian officials themselves have also cited the Suez Canal. In 1956, Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal, and Egypt collected fees from it for seventy years, with peak revenue reaching $9.4 billion annually. When the Iranian parliament defended the Strait of Hormuz management plan, it explicitly mentioned the Suez precedent and also cited Denmark's historical toll collection on the Sound Strait.

The core logic is the same: a country in a key position can monetize its geography.

However, the differences are significant. Egypt's sovereignty over the Suez Canal is based on international law; the canal is man-made and belongs to Egyptian territory. The Hormuz Strait, on the other hand, is a natural strait and, under international law, is a "strait for international navigation." According to UNCLOS, coastal states are not allowed to charge transit fees to vessels.

Iran's response: We did not sign UNCLOS.

A Foreign Policy analysis on April 7 put it bluntly: if Iran can turn the wartime temporary fees into a permanent peacetime system, it will be the biggest economic and geopolitical event in the Middle East since Nasser nationalized Suez.

What did the market glean?

After the ceasefire announcement, Bitcoin surged from around $68,000 to over $72,000. Following the FT's report on Bitcoin tollbooths, it jumped to $73,000.

The market is pricing two things.

An old story: Bitcoin as a safe-haven asset. Since the start of the Iraq War, Bitcoin has outperformed physical gold, and the concept of "digital gold," after a period of silence, has returned to the forefront.

A new development: Bitcoin as an international settlement tool. A sovereign nation, controlling the world's largest energy bottleneck, is using Bitcoin to receive payments. This isn't the scenario described in the white paper, where a country cornered discovers that outside the dollar system, Bitcoin is one of the few remaining channels for receiving money.

For fifteen years, the crypto community has debated "what is the purpose of Bitcoin?" Hormuz offered an unexpected answer: when two countries go to war, sanctions are fully implemented, SWIFT is cut off, and stablecoins are frozen, Bitcoin is the last remaining payment channel.

This use case is very realistic, but it's also not very visually appealing.

In an interview with ABC on April 8, Trump called the joint US-Iran tollbooth a "beautiful thing" and said he wanted to form a "joint venture." The White House spokesperson immediately clarified that a ceasefire was contingent on the Strait of Hormuz being "immediately, fully, and safely open, without tolls." The two sides' statements contradict each other.

Even more intriguing is Trump's own position. His family's project, World Liberty Financial, launched the USD stablecoin USD1 and is partnering with Aster DEX to launch USD1-settled crude oil futures. Bloomberg previously reported that Iran accepts USD stablecoins as payment methods, including USDT and USDC. The Trump family's stablecoin business and Iran's need to circumvent sanctions create a subtle overlap in the term "stablecoin."

After the toll booth

FXStreet's analysis points to a potential risk: if the model of military coercion combined with crypto payments proves successful in the Strait of Hormuz, similar models could emerge in the Strait of Malacca and the Bosphorus. The free passage rules maintained by the US Navy for 80 years cannot be automatically enforced simply by being written down. Cryptocurrencies, in particular, offer the technological possibility of circumventing financial sanctions through "fees."

In the 1956 Suez Crisis, Nasser won not because the Egyptian army could defeat the British and French forces, but because the United States refused to support the invasion. The fait accompli was thus established. Seventy years later, the Hormuz crisis is similarly a matter of political will: how much is the United States willing to pay to reopen the Straits?

Currently, the outlook is not optimistic. The ceasefire lasted less than 24 hours before Israel launched airstrikes against Lebanon, prompting Iran to again suspend passage through the Straits. Maersk stated they are still in the process of "urgently confirming the terms" and dare not send ships. A shipping company executive bluntly told CNBC, "We haven't received any information on how to pass safely."

The ceasefire may not last more than two weeks. But Iran has already proven one thing: a country that has been kicked out of SWIFT, had its dollar assets frozen, and been cut off from all traditional financial channels has built a fee system on the world's most important maritime chokepoint using Bitcoin and stablecoins, with a potential monthly revenue of $800 million, and people are already paying for it.

The cryptocurrency industry spent fifteen years proving the value of "decentralized payments," and the most powerful proof ultimately came not from Silicon Valley startups or Wall Street institutions, but from the Iranian Revolutionary Guard in the Persian Gulf.

This is probably not the scenario Satoshi Nakamoto envisioned when he wrote the white paper, but this is the reality of 2026: technology doesn't discriminate against users.

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