Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) is back on her crypto-criticism beat, and this time she's got a Wall Street Journal report to back her up. On Sunday, she pointed to a story detailing how Iran-affiliated entities have been moving eye-popping sums through CoinEx, a cryptocurrency exchange that pulled out of the U.S. after getting sued in 2023.
“More evidence that our adversaries exploit crypto to move billions,” Warren posted on X. She didn't stop there—she also took aim at the Clarity Act, a piece of crypto legislation she says would make the problem “worse” by creating new loopholes. Her message to Congress: strengthen the bill, don't weaken it.
The WSJ report is a doozy. It says CoinEx has played a “growing role” in connecting Iran's crypto operations to global markets, with wallets hosted by the exchange moving more than $3.84 billion over the last seven years. Some of those wallets received hacked cryptocurrency that originally came from Iran's Central Bank, and they were used to transact directly with accounts that U.S. officials have linked to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. That's the kind of thing that gets a senator's attention.
CoinEx isn't exactly a stranger to legal trouble. In 2023, New York Attorney General Letitia James sued the exchange for allegedly doing business in the state without proper registration. The exchange didn't immediately respond to requests for comment.
This isn't Warren's first rodeo on Iran and crypto. In May, she flagged concerns about Nobitex, Iran's leading crypto trading platform, which reportedly processes about 70% of the country's crypto activity and claims to serve roughly 11 million users. Nobitex has been moving billions worth of trades on Tron (TRX) and BNB Chain (BNB), and it's been under increased scrutiny from U.S. regulators and policymakers for continuing to operate during wartime.
Warren's broader point is that crypto is becoming a go-to tool for countries like Iran to bypass sanctions, and she's worried that well-intentioned legislation might accidentally make it easier. Whether you agree with her or not, the numbers are hard to ignore.
