Iran’s Strait of Hormuz toll booth ran through a bitcoin exchange, U.S. says
The U.S. Treasury sanctioned BitBank, a Tehran exchange it says moved hundreds of millions of dollars in bitcoin to the Revolutionary Guards and handled payments collected from ships buying passage through the world’s most important oil chokepoint.
Source: CoinDesk
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DW NOTE
Iran collected passage fees in bitcoin because sovereign extortion works better when the rails can't be frozen. The Strait has been effectively closed since February — eight ships crossed last week versus the usual eighty-five per day — so Treasury is sanctioning the exchange six months after the toll booth stopped mattering.