A new Reuters investigation says the same crypto infrastructure that helped power President Donald Trump’s crypto venture was also heavily used by Iran’s biggest crypto exchange, Nobitex. The overlap centers around two major blockchain ecosystems: Tron, created by Justin Sun, and BNB Chain, closely tied to Changpeng Zhao and Binance.
According to Reuters, Nobitex processed at least $2.3 billion worth of crypto transactions through Tron and BNB Chain since 2023. Investigators and blockchain analysts say these networks were used by Iranian entities, including institutions linked to the Iranian central bank and the IRGC, to move funds and potentially bypass Western sanctions.
At the same time, both Justin Sun and Binance became important supporters of World Liberty Financial, the Trump family-backed crypto business. Reuters reports that Sun invested heavily in World Liberty’s WLFI token, while Binance supported the project’s USD1 stablecoin ecosystem.
The article does not claim Trump or his family knowingly worked with Iran or Nobitex. Reuters explicitly says there’s no evidence of direct involvement. The issue is more about overlapping financial infrastructure and political optics: the same blockchain systems boosting Trump-linked crypto projects were also enabling large-scale Iranian crypto flows during a period of intense geopolitical conflict.
The report also raises questions about conflicts of interest because the Trump administration has taken a much more crypto-friendly approach since returning to office in 2025. Reuters notes that regulators eased some enforcement actions against crypto firms, and Trump later pardoned Zhao over anti-money-laundering violations tied to Binance.
Meanwhile, Binance and Tron both defended themselves by arguing that public blockchains are permissionless networks. Their representatives said they do not directly control who uses the chains, comparing them more to open infrastructure than banks. Tron also said it cooperates with law enforcement and has frozen wallets tied to sanctioned activity in some cases.
The broader takeaway is uncomfortable for the crypto industry: decentralized networks can simultaneously support billion-dollar political ventures, ordinary retail users, and sanctioned state-linked actors — all on the same rails. That’s exactly the kind of contradiction critics of crypto have warned about for years.