After an initial import paid for in cryptocurrencies earlier this month, Iran has again affirmed its willingness to use digital assets for cross-border payments.
Iran opens up to cryptocurrencies for cross-border payments
Earlier this month, Iran made news with a $10 million import paid for in cryptocurrencies. At the time, the government announced that the practice should become more widespread in the future. The promises seem to be kept, given that a regulation around cross-border payments in cryptos has just been validated by the country’s authorities.
The information, relayed by a local media, was made official on Sunday by the Minister of Industry, Mines and Trade, Reza Fatemi Amin. He was speaking at a car show:
“Under an agreement between the Ministry of Industry and the Central Bank of Iran, imports from abroad can be processed using cryptocurrencies.”
The case of international sanctions
Iran is subject to several international sanctions, whether from Europe or the United States. The latter are notably the consequence of the Iranian nuclear weapons program. This state of affairs has led several observers to wonder about a possible desire to get around the said sanctions.
This is a concern that tends to resurface when geopolitics and cryptocurrencies are mixed, as we saw earlier this year with Russia. While this may be the case to some extent, it’s important to keep in mind that a sanction is still a sanction. This means that an exporting country must comply, whether it is paid in fiat currency or not.
While it’s still hard to say how open Iran is to cryptocurrencies, such a decision is rather encouraging. In the first announcement, Alireza Peyman Pak, the deputy minister of industry and trade, had actually explicitly talked about further use of smart contracts and cryptos in the future.
So this is a strong signal, which leaves good hopes for a more widespread use by other states across the globe.
