Sanctions

Wallex (legal name: Khalgh Sarvat Sarzamin Parseh / Khalq Tharwat Sarzamin Parseh Company) is Iran's second-largest cryptocurrency exchange by transaction volume, founded in 2018 in Tehran. On June 2, 2026, the U.S. Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) added Wallex to its Specially Designated Nationals (SDN) list under Executive Order 13902, citing its operation in the Iranian financial sector and its facilitation of transactions linked to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). The designation was part of Operation Economic Fury, the largest-ever U.S. enforcement action targeting Iran's digital asset sector.

Tornado Cash is an open-source, non-custodial cryptocurrency mixing protocol on Ethereum, launched in 2019, that obscures the on-chain link between deposit and withdrawal addresses. The U.S. Treasury sanctioned the protocol in August 2022 over its alleged use by the North Korea-linked Lazarus Group and other illicit actors to launder billions of dollars; those sanctions were struck down by the Fifth Circuit in November 2024 and formally lifted by OFAC in March 2025. Separately, co-founder Alexey Pertsev was convicted of money laundering in the Netherlands in 2024 (appeal pending), and co-founder Roman Storm was convicted in August 2025 of one count of conspiring to operate an unlicensed money-transmitting business while a New York jury deadlocked on more serious money-laundering and sanctions-violation charges that remain unresolved pending post-trial motions and a possible retrial.

Token 2049 is one of the world's largest crypto conferences, held annually in Singapore and Dubai by Hong Kong-based BOB Group. The event has faced repeated criticism for insufficient sponsor vetting, most notably when OFAC- and UK-sanctioned Russia-linked stablecoin A7A5 was listed as a platinum sponsor and given a speaking slot at the October 2025 Singapore edition. Separately, in March 2025, on-chain investigator ZachXBT publicly flagged multiple Token 2049 sponsors — including DWF Labs, Bitunix, JuCoin, WEEX, and Spacecoin — for fraud, wash trading, and regulatory non-compliance, warning that conference sponsorship carries no implied credibility.