Platform Risk Exposure: Cryptocurrency Exchanges Become "Breeding Grounds" for Sanctions Evasion

On-Chain Data Analysis Company TRM Labs Recently Released a Study Report That Has Drawn Industry Attention. The Report Shows that the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) of Iran, through two UK-registered crypto exchange platforms Zedcex and Zedxion, has transferred nearly $1 billion since 2023, primarily settling transactions using USDT on the Tron network.

Shocking Data: How Large Is the Scale of Sanction Evasion?

According to TRM Labs’ analysis, the scale of these funds is astonishing. From a temporal perspective, transfers in 2023 amounted to approximately $24 million, skyrocketed to $619 million in 2024, and reached $410 million in 2025. More notably, the IRGC-related transactions accounted for 56% of the total trading volume on these two platforms from 2023 to 2025—that is, over half of the trading activity on these exchanges is linked to this sanction target.

Exchange Compliance Dilemma: Where Are the Regulatory Gaps?

Although Zedcex and Zedxion claim to comply with Anti-Money Laundering (AML) standards and relevant regulatory requirements, TRM Labs’ findings cast doubt on these claims. This again exposes a systemic issue: some exchanges have significant deficiencies in compliance checks, or the regulatory mechanisms themselves have loopholes. Especially in on-chain transactions within ecosystems like Tron, tracking fund flows is more difficult, providing opportunities for illicit funds to slip through.

Industry Reflection: Crypto Exchanges Need Stricter Scrutiny

This case demonstrates that even exchanges registered in developed countries can become tools for evading international sanctions. For the entire crypto industry, this serves as a regulatory warning and a severe test of exchange risk control systems. How to balance user privacy protection with preventing illegal fund flows will be a challenge that exchanges and regulators must jointly address.