The U.S. Treasury Department has sanctioned two Iranian maritime insurance entities for operating what it described as an extortion scheme that accepted bitcoin and other digital assets as payment and funneled proceeds to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).

The Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) designated the Persian Gulf Marine Insurance Company and the HormuzSafe Marine Services Authority, the latter known as Hormuz Safe. Treasury said the operation forced commercial vessels transiting the Strait of Hormuz to purchase coverage against risks — including vessel seizures — that "are overwhelmingly created by Iran itself."

Hormuz Safe was developed by Iran's Ministry of Economy and "accepts payment in Bitcoin and other digital assets as part of the regime's attempts to bypass Western sanctions," according to a Treasury statement (press release).

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in the statement: "With its economy in freefall and inflation in the triple digits, the regime is desperate for cash."

CoinDesk first reported the existence of the plan on May 18, citing state-linked Fars News accounts that described an economy ministry proposal to manage shipping through the Strait using bitcoin-settled marine insurance policies (CoinDesk, May 18). At the time, the platform's website displayed only a landing page, and CoinDesk could not verify whether it was operational or whether any cargo owners had used it. Fars claimed the model could generate more than $10 billion but did not explain how it arrived at that figure.

The insurance policies were approved by the Persian Gulf Strait Authority, an IRGC-backed body that Treasury had previously designated in May. Both firms sanctioned on Thursday were targeted under an executive order covering Iran's petroleum and petrochemical sectors.

The designations bar U.S. persons from dealing with the two companies. Foreign firms that transact with them — including those paying in cryptocurrency — risk secondary sanctions. Treasury emphasized that payments in bitcoin carry the same sanctions exposure as payments processed through traditional banking channels. The designation marks one of the more explicit instances in which OFAC has identified a state-operated digital-asset payment channel tied to a sanctioned government's revenue-generating infrastructure, distinct from prior crypto sanctions actions that have largely targeted mixers, exchanges, and ransomware networks.

For the global shipping and marine insurance industry, the action signals that compliance departments will need to treat cryptocurrency payments to insurers or service providers in sanctioned jurisdictions with the same screening rigor applied to fiat transactions, even where the payer is not itself a U.S. person.

The Strait of Hormuz is one of the world's most critical energy chokepoints, through which roughly a fifth of global oil consumption typically flows. Traffic through the waterway has thinned during weeks of U.S. strikes on Iran, contributing to elevated oil prices.