OFAC publishes 47 sanctioned Bitcoin addresses tied to oil settlement

The Treasury Department published its first batch of Bitcoin addresses designated under last week’s executive order: 47 outputs linked to Zhuhai Zhenrong, the National Iranian Oil Company, and intermediary wallets in the China-Iran oil settlement chain. Major U.S.-compliant exchanges — Coinbase, Kraken, Gemini — flagged the addresses within hours. Binance froze three. But on-chain data shows the flagged UTXOs have already been consolidated through CoinJoin transactions and redistributed across thousands of fresh addresses. OFAC built its sanctions regime for bank accounts and SWIFT codes. Applying it to a pseudonymous ledger is like sanctioning water.