Author: Liu Honglin

On April 8, the Financial Times reported that under a two-week ceasefire arrangement, Iran plans to impose a toll in cryptocurrency on fully loaded oil tankers passing through the Strait of Hormuz to maintain its actual control over this critical waterway. According to the report, ships must declare cargo information via email in advance, and Iran will notify payment after verifying the amount, charging a fee of one dollar per barrel of oil, while empty tankers can pass for free, with payment required in Bitcoin. The report also mentioned that one of the important reasons for this arrangement is to evade the risks of asset tracking and freezing in a sanctions environment.

This is not an ordinary cryptocurrency news.

The Strait of Hormuz is one of the most important energy transportation corridors in the world. Any fees, controls, and passage arrangements occurring around this waterway are not just commercial issues but geopolitical issues as well. Precisely for this reason, Iran's proposal to "pay with Bitcoin" does not merely offer a new narrative to the cryptocurrency space; it brings a topic that originally resided more in the investment market back to the level of international politics and sovereign security.

This statement is not saying that Bitcoin has finally achieved some significant "payment application" news, nor is it suggesting that Iran's approach is technically advanced. On the contrary, its credibility arises because this scenario is realistic and extreme enough.

In the ongoing conflict between Iran and the United States, what a nation must consider is no longer the most efficient payment method, but rather what can still truly be controlled under the worst circumstances.

If this matter were only viewed from Iran's perspective, it might seem somewhat abrupt. But if we pull the timeline back a bit, we will find that Iran is actually not the first country to realize the strategic value of Bitcoin.

In the past two years, Russia has already experienced the pain of being choked off in payment systems.

Stablecoins are good, but not good enough

The weight of this news from Iran lies in the fact that it reveals not a technical choice but a survival choice. When discussing payment tools, people usually prioritize cost, efficiency, stability, and usage habits; however, once the scenario shifts to energy transportation, sovereignty confrontation, and evasion of sanctions, the judging criteria change to another set: whether it can be tracked, whether it can be frozen.

Iran obviously does not want to accept US dollars directly.

This does not require much explanation. The dollar has never been just a currency; it is also part of the clearing network, agency banking system, compliance rules, and a tool for sanctions. For countries under long-term pressure from US sanctions, the dollar system brings not only convenience but also risks of being interrupted at any time. You can receive money, but that does not mean you can freely dispose of it; you can see assets on the books, but that does not guarantee that these assets will not turn into frozen numbers at the next moment.

But what is more worthy of discussion than "not accepting dollars" is another layer: why not dollar stablecoins either.

In recent years, stablecoins have almost become the most successful products in the cryptocurrency world. Whether in cross-border payments, exchange settlements, over-the-counter exchanges, or various high-gray international fund transfers, the commercial value of stablecoins has been proven. They are faster than traditional wire transfers, more flexible than bank transfers, and in many countries and regions, easier to access than local financial systems.

From a business perspective, it is quite natural for many businesses to be willing to use them.

However, business and state are not the same perspective. Enterprises make choices primarily based on ease of use, speed, cost-effectiveness; states make choices primarily based on critical applicability at key moments. While stablecoins can certainly serve as efficiency tools in regular commercial activities, their issues become very clear in the context of sovereign security and international sanctions: unlike Bitcoin, most stablecoins are centrally issued.

Russia has previously suffered from this.

In March 2025, the Russian cryptocurrency exchange Garantex was placed under EU sanctions, and Tether froze over $28 million in USDT from related wallets on that platform, which subsequently suspended operations. Reuters reported that Russian officials pointed out that USDT should not be viewed as a reliable tool for evading sanctions.

This scene is actually very typical. It illustrates not that stablecoins are difficult to use but that the true boundaries of stablecoins are very clear. In normal times, they are excellent applications of blockchain technology; however, when it comes to critical moments, people will remember that there are still clear issuing institutions, control mechanisms, and freezing capabilities behind them. They may be more flexible than traditional bank accounts but do not entirely escape centralized power structures. In many scenarios, they are complements, even extensions of the banking system, rather than outright replacements.

In February 2026, Tether stated that it had frozen approximately $4.2 billion in USDT assets related to criminal activities, of which about $3.5 billion was frozen since 2023 and had assisted the US Department of Justice in freezing nearly $61 million in assets.

From the perspective of compliance and law enforcement cooperation, this mechanism has its rationality, and that is not the issue. The real problem is that precisely because it is rational, mature, and executable, it also makes it difficult to become the ultimate payment tool relied upon by a country under severe sanctions. For ordinary businesses, stablecoins are certainly sufficient; for many private entities in cross-border trade, stablecoins may even be one of the most convenient tools in reality. But for sovereign nations, especially in high-pressure contexts such as energy, shipping, war, and sanctions, they remain "not sufficient."

Although dollar stablecoins have moved onto the blockchain, they essentially still have not truly detached from the control of issuers and rule-makers. For a country hoping to retain initiative in highly sensitive situations, today's stablecoins are far from enough.

Bitcoin is the Only Antidote

There are at least over 40 million types of global crypto assets, but very few can be considered secure from the perspective of a nation.

To be sufficiently decentralized, sufficiently global, sufficiently liquid, sufficiently secure, and not have a clear central entity that can be directly pressured, frozen, or shut down. Many tokens have a presence in the investment market, liquidity on trading platforms, and stories in the ecosystem, but once the question changes to "can the state use it to collect money," most lose their significance in discussion.

What can still be seriously discussed, perhaps, is still Bitcoin.

The importance of Bitcoin is not merely based on how much it has risen or fallen, nor is it solely a high-volatility risk asset. Its deeper value lies in its lack of a centralized issuer; no single company can decide whether it can continue to exist, nor can any financial institution directly freeze it into a string of non-functional codes.

Of course, this does not mean that Bitcoin is completely free from real-world constraints. It will still be affected by transaction infrastructure, on-chain tracking, inflow and outflow processes, and regulations from various countries. But at least at the level of the asset itself, it comes closer to a neutral asset that is not dependent on any sovereign credit compared to fiat currencies, bank deposits, or centralized stablecoins.

From this perspective, Bitcoin indeed resembles gold more and more, but it is even better than gold.

In a world where divisions deepen, trust declines, and payment systems are repoliticized, they are both closer to that hard asset which does not belong to any balance sheet and is not entirely constrained by a single rule system. Gold serves as a safe-haven asset in the old world, while Bitcoin resembles more the gold of the digital age. Gold is suited to be locked in vaults, whereas Bitcoin is better suited to cross borders.

In this sense, Iran's requirement for oil tankers in Hormuz to pay with Bitcoin is not just another cryptocurrency application case. It is more like a very straightforward reminder: in today's world, the most irreplaceable value of Bitcoin may not lie in whether it can become a payment tool used daily by everyone, but rather in that when the traditional payment systems begin to fail and when centralized digital currencies also reveal their controlling boundaries, it may be one of the very few trust assets still chosen by sovereign nations.

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