With the Trade Ministry officially approving the use of cryptocurrencies for foreign trade, Iran will become the first-of-a-kind adopter in the world.
The obvious problem with the news is that the country’s innovative policy obviously aims at circumventing financial sanctions that have been hampering its participation in the global economy for many years.
These circumstances set an ambivalent tone for Iran’s experiment — while for some, it could prove crypto’s emancipating ability to shirk the all-too-real hegemony of the United States political will and international financial institutions that enforce it, hardline crypto skeptics could get the proof they need for their prophecies about decentralized digital assets being a weapon of choice for disrupting the fragile global order.
Putting aside the ethical debates, it is still curious to know how exactly this strategy will work, what influence it will have on Iran’s trading partners and what challenges it will draw from the hostile enforcement bodies.
The road to adoption
The first public announcement of a trading system allowing local businesses to settle cross-border payments using cryptocurrencies in Iran came in January 2022. At the time, Iran’s Deputy Minister of Industry, Mine and Trade, Alireza Peyman-Pak, spoke of the “new opportunities” for importers and exporters in that kind of system, a product of joint action by the Central Bank of Iran and the Ministry of Trade should provide:
“All economic actors can use these cryptocurrencies. The trader takes the ruble, the rupee, the dollar, or the euro, which he can use to obtain cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, which is a form of credit and can pass it on to the seller or importer. […] Since the cryptocurrency market is done on credit, our economic actors can easily use it and use it widely.”
In August, Peyman-Pak revealed that Iran had placed its first import order using crypto. Without any details about the cryptocurrency used or the imported goods involved, the official claimed that the $10 million order represents the first of many international trades to be settled with crypto, with plans to ramp this up throughout September.
On Aug. 30, Trade Minister Reza Fatemi Amin confirmed that detailed regulations had been approved, outlining the use of cryptocurrencies for trade. While the full text still couldn’t be attained online, local businesses should be able to import vehicles into Iran and a range of different imported…
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