{"id":26,"date":"2026-05-23T23:39:16","date_gmt":"2026-05-23T23:39:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/reliablemovingcrews.com\/?p=26"},"modified":"2026-05-23T23:39:16","modified_gmt":"2026-05-23T23:39:16","slug":"how-trumps-crypto-venture-and-irans-top-exchange-tapped-into-the-same-industry-networks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/reliablemovingcrews.com\/?p=26","title":{"rendered":"How Trump\u2019s crypto venture and Iran\u2019s top exchange tapped into the same industry networks"},"content":{"rendered":"
LONDON – When customers of Iran\u2019s largest crypto exchange needed to move billions of dollars, networks created by two of the industry\u2019s biggest players served as conduits.<\/div>
And from the early stages of President Donald Trump\u2019s flagship digital currency venture, the same two players lent credibility to the startup.<\/div>
According to data analysed by Reuters, Iran\u2019s Nobitex exchange has processed at least $2.3 billion since 2023 on Tron and BNB Chain, blockchainsestablished respectively under crypto billionaires Justin Sun and Changpeng Zhao. Users of Tron and BNB Chain pay fees to use the blockchains, which serve as secure, tamper-resistant record keepers.<\/div>
Iranian money has kept moving through those two digital ledgers during the U.S. and Israeli war against the Islamic Republic.<\/div>
Sun and Binance, the crypto exchange owned by Zhao, are both prominent backers of World Liberty Financial, the crypto firm co-founded by Trump and his family.<\/div>
There\u2019s no suggestion that the Trump family knew of Nobitex\u2019s use of Tron and BNB Chain. <\/div>
Still, the Iran transactions highlight the potentially conflicted position in which the Trumps\u2019 sprawling business interests have placed the U.S. presidency. The family-owned Trump Organization real-estate empire, for example, continues to pursue foreign deals.<\/div>
The use of the blockchains by institutions in a country the United States is at war with is a \u201cdramatic irony,\u201d said John Reed Stark, a former chief of the Securities and Exchange Commission\u2019s Office of Internet Enforcement. \u201cThe entities doing crypto financing through these platforms are the very ones that the president is trying to defeat in the war.\u201d <\/div>
The administration denies that Trump\u2019s businesses pose any conflict of interest. \u201cReuters\u2019 bizarre attempts to link President Trump to Iran\u2019s banking system are totally laughable,\u201d said Anna Kelly, a White House spokeswoman. She referred Reuters to World Liberty for further questions.<\/div>
A spokeswoman for World Liberty said the company has no relationship with Nobitex and follows U.S. law. \u201cWorld Liberty does not own, operate, or control Tron in any way, and has no authority over transactions conducted on it,\u201d she said.<\/div>
Nobitex, which is used extensively by sanctioned Iranian institutions and ordinary citizens, has processed more than $2 billion on Tronsince January 1, 2023, according to a Reuters breakdown of public blockchain data from crypto analytics firm Arkham.<\/div>
Since 2023, Nobitex also has processed at least $317 million on BNB Chain, a blockchain formerly known as Binance Smart Chain that was developed by Binance, the world\u2019s biggest crypto exchange.<\/div>
Reuters is reporting the data from Arkham, which did not respond to a request for comment, for the first time. <\/div>
Since the Iran war started in February, crypto worth at least $22.6 million has moved through Nobitex on BNB Chain, and at least $550,000 has moved via Tron.<\/div>
Reuters reported on May 1 that Nobitex is controlled by two brothers from a powerful Iranian family that has close ties to the new supreme leader. Under the brothers\u2019 leadership, the exchange has grown from a startup into a central node of a parallel Iranian financial system used to evade Western sanctions. Reuters found that its users have included Iran\u2019s central bank and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, known as the IRGC.<\/div>
About $7.8 billion in crypto flowed between Nobitex and theBinance exchange between 2018 and 2022, Reuters reported in 2022. About three-quarters of the Iranian funds that passed through Binance were in Tron\u2019s cryptocurrency. Nobitex encouraged clients to use Tron\u2019s crypto to trade anonymously without \u201cendangering assets due to sanctions,\u201d Reuters reported.<\/div>
Four crypto analysts, including two specialists in Iran\u2019s use of digital assets, reviewed Reuters\u2019 calculation that Nobitex has handled at least $2.3 billion in transactions via BNB Chain and Tron. All said it was sound.<\/div>
One of the Iran specialists, independent researcher and investigator Rich Sanders, said the true volume was likely significantly higher because flows are visible only for wallet addresses known to be owned by Nobitex. The Iranian company has publicly said it switches addresses to make tracing and intercepting transfers harder.<\/div>
Presented with a detailed summary of this article, spokespeople for both Binance and BNB Chain told Reuters that Binance neither operates nor controls BNB Chain.<\/div>
\u201cBNB Chain is a public, permissionless blockchain maintained by an independent global community of validators,\u201d BNB Chain spokeswoman Ana Nicoara said in a statement to Reuters. \u201cIt is not an exchange, not a company, and not Binance.\u201d<\/div>
The Binance spokesperson said the firm was \u201can initial contributor and incubator\u201d of BNB Chain and provided early operational support. The operations and intellectual property of the BNB Chain website, which is the primary interface for users and developers of the blockchain, were transferred to a company called BNB Chain Technology Holding Limited in 2023, the spokesperson added. <\/div>
Corporate records from Abu Dhabi, however, document ongoing ties between Binance and BNB Chain Technology. The filings, reviewed by Reuters, show that Zhao, the Binance founder and majority shareholder, is BNB Chain Technology\u2019s only listed shareholder. <\/div>
Relations between Tron\u2019s founder Sun and World Liberty have recently turned sour. Sun in April \u200bsued World Liberty, accusing it of extortion for allegedly pressuring him to invest in its stablecoin. World Liberty countersued in early May, alleging defamation. <\/div>
Asked about Nobitex\u2019s use of Tron, a spokeswoman for Tron said it is a technology provider and unable to \u201cmonitor and investigate every user and every transaction\u201d or prevent their trading. Nonetheless, Sun helped create an initiative that works with law enforcement, the spokeswoman said, without offering details. The initiative has frozen \u201chundreds of millions\u201d in funds, including those \u201ctied to sanctioned entities and terror financing,\u201d she said.<\/div>
In statements to Reuters, Nobitex denied having direct Iranian government connections or assisting the state, and said that any illicit funds moving through the exchange did so without management approval or awareness.<\/div>
The U.S. Treasury Department, Iran\u2019s government and its central bank did not respond to requests for comment about the ties between Binance, Tron and illicit Iranian funds.<\/div>

A BANK\u2019S CHAINS<\/h3>
Crypto exchanges such as Binance are platforms where people buy, sell or trade digital assets. Blockchains such as BNB Chain and Tron are public ledgers that record transactions and the digital \u201cwallets\u201d used to make them. Some exchanges, like Binance, have launched blockchains and issued their own digital tokens.<\/div>
Like other blockchains, Tron and BNB Chain host a variety of crypto tokens, from coins issued by Tron and Binance themselves to stablecoins such as tether whose value is pegged to other assets. The Iran-linked transactions make up a small fraction of these networks\u2019 overall volume. <\/div>
Sanders and the other Iran crypto specialist, who requested anonymity, said that among those to use Tron and BNB Chain was the Central Bank of Iran. The United States sanctioned the central bank in 2019 for allegedly providing billions of dollars to the IRGC and Lebanon\u2019s Hezbollah. <\/div>
The central bank bought more than $500 million of tether via Tron between November 2024 and June 2025, according to a report in January by blockchain analysis company Elliptic and the two Iran specialists. In the first six months of last year, around $347 million of the total was sent to Nobitex using Tron, Elliptic told Reuters.<\/div>
The central bank also converted the tether to different coins and used other blockchains \u2013 including BNB Chain \u2013 to cover its tracks, the Iran specialists said. Some of that crypto was converted back to tether and routed to Nobitex and other exchanges, Sanders and the other Iran specialist added.<\/div>
Since its founding in 2018, Nobitex has processed between tens of millions and hundreds of millions of dollars in transactions linked to sanctioned groups including Iran\u2019s central bank and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, according to estimates by crypto analysts looking at sanctioned wallets. <\/div>
It is unclear whether Tron and BNB Chain were aware their networks were used by the central bank and Nobitex, which has not been specifically sanctioned. Doing business with Iranian entities falls under general Western sanctions. Reuters could not determine why the United States has not sanctioned Nobitex.<\/div>
Tether, the company which issues the stablecoin by the same name, said it had frozen multiple wallet addresses associated with Nobitex at the request of Israel. Israel\u2019s National Bureau for Counter Terror Financing did not respond to a request for comment.<\/div>
Tether said crypto exchanges and platforms are responsible for compliance in trading on secondary markets.<\/div>

A CRYPTO-FRIENDLY WHITE HOUSE<\/h3>
Trump\u2019s return to the White House in January 2025 \u2013 and his embrace of crypto \u2013 shaped the fortunes of the president’s family, Sun and Zhao.<\/div>
Members of the Trump family have launched a string of crypto businesses, including World Liberty, that generated hundreds of millions of dollars in income in 2025, Reuters reported last year.<\/div>
As World Liberty struggled to attract investors after its launch in October 2024, Sun, the founder of Tron, invested tens of millions of dollars in World Liberty\u2019s WLFI tokens, lending momentum to the fledgling company.<\/div>
In early 2025, an Abu Dhabi investment firm, MGX, bought a $2 billion stake in Binance. Soon after, World Liberty announced the purchase would be made in its USD1 stablecoin.<\/div>
Binance\u2019s acceptance of the World Liberty Financial stablecoin gave credibility to the newly launched token and was cited by World Liberty as evidence of \u201cextraordinary, worldwide demand\u201d for USD1. MGX\u2019s acquisition could also yield millions of dollars annually for the Trumps, according to the Reuters report last year. <\/div>
MGX has said it chose USD1 after evaluating several stablecoins, and that Binance had requested the use of crypto in the transaction.<\/div>
In October 2025, Trump pardoned Zhao, the founder and former CEO of Binance, wiping away his federal conviction for failing to maintain an effective anti-money-laundering program. Lawyers for Binance and Zhao, who has retained his majority stake in the company, have said there was no connection between the use of USD1 and the pardon.<\/div>
Since taking office, Trump has launched a suite of crypto-friendly policies and U.S. regulators have paused enforcement actions against crypto companies and moguls. The Securities and Exchange Commission settled a lawsuit against Sun for alleged fraud in March for $10 million without Sun admitting any wrongdoing.<\/div>
Sun’s current portfolio of 4 billion WLFI tokens is worth roughly $266 million, according to Reuters calculations based on the latest WLFI price. Sun has also invested in Trump\u2019s meme coin and has used his crypto platforms to boost USD1, World Liberty\u2019s second cryptocurrency.<\/div>
For its part, Binance has continued to support USD1, enabling the token\u2019s trading with other crypto coins and incentivising users to hold it. Arkham data shows Binance now holds $3.8 billion of the Trump token.<\/div>