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Comment by wongarsu | Hacker News Reader

I was under the impression that they were asking for payment in stablecoins, not bitcoin? Did they change their mind?

Given that 99% of stablecoins are USD-denominated, and that the vast, vast majority of those are custodial, Bitcoin makes much more sense for Iran.

With Iran's hyperinflation, why wouldn't USD make sense?

I think they’re kinda mad at the US at the moment

They're risking another January-like protest if they don't stabilise their economy.

I think they don't want strengthen USD, nor risk having their assets frozen by sanctions.

To add more context to what I believe the parent commenter was referring to, the vast majority of USD stablecoins are custodial, meaning the funds can be frozen arbitrarily at any time by the custodian (i.e. Circle).

This is why when cyberthreat actors steal millions in USD stablecoins by hacking a protocol or a large wallet, the very first thing they do is convert those stablecoins to something else.

I’ve heard a lot of discussion about them accepting payments in Chinese yuan. I wonder if there’s a stablecoin pegged to it.

China issued a stable coin about five years ago. It is used for all retail payments (I believe, small value, payments for govt employee salaries, etc). Somewhat bizarrely, it is significantly more privacy-protecting than payments in the West.

Quite funny to read comments from people asking what use is crypto. Can tell they have probably never left West Virgina.

Don't think it would be that useful for Iran though as they are already RMB earners, and RMB financial markets are still a bit questionable (there is depth, I don't think anyone knows why this depth exists or what it is actually for, just state-linked banks moving paper between themselves furiously).

Yeah pretty since the start of the conflict there was talk of companies could use Chinese yuan to get an pass through. It also makes more sense they would use the Chinese yuan the West can track or block those transactions.

Not only that the Chinese Yuan is probably more interesting given they can buy more things with it from China things like consumer tech/products, chemicals and rare earths for weapon systems etc.

Tether has one on ethereum but same problem if the US gov tell tether to whip their address it is game over.

China has probably one on another blockchain but I am not sure how easy it is to exit their ecosystem or convert it to anything else...

I believe the only stablecoin that is "uncensorable" is the old MakerDAO DAI (pegged to USD with vaults overcollaterised with other tokens). Not sure if there is a lot of liquidity left.

Its successor USDS has implemented all the mechanisms to censor some addresses but if I remember correctly this hasn't been activated yet.

All the other ones: USDC, USDT, EURC and the ruble one can be whipped out easily. So more risky for them than good old dollars.

Please correct me if I missed something.

You can issue any stablecoin via bitcoins taproot asset protocol. Transfer even over lightning. Thus it is uncensorable. USDT has this enabled.

Indeed, very interesting !

Apparently it is very recent [0]

Now I am still wondering, does the taproot asset protocol make it really uncensorable? because on Ethereum an address can be blacklisted by Tether and the USDT frozen (through the ERC20 contract I believe).

And I would be a bit surprise that Tether, which is more and more integrated and compliant with regulations, would start minting USDT on a system that doesn't have an asset freezing mechanism...

- [0] https://www.binance.com/en/square/post/03-31-2026-tether-rei...

I am not deep enough into the tech complexity, but AFAIK the token on TAP is traceable by the owner, just as bitcoin is. While not on-chain, the proof file that the new owner gets during transfer includes the full history and lineage of that token.

I.e. the moment you want to exchange the stablecoin token for the underlying asset (being it fiat USD, gold or whatnot) the stablecoin issuer can refuse to do that exchange for whatever grounds they have - probably based on regulation. So if a sanctioned entity (russia, iran) owned that token before, it is in the history and the stablecoin issuer can refuse to swap.

BUT: Good luck tying the public keys to real-world entities like russian goverment. Other than on-chain with bitcoin, you would only revel the public key if you traded with that entity, and are part of the lineage. The keys are not revealed to the entire world.

Plus, this also does not prevent fungibility of the token, you can still transfer the token to whatever other wallet you like, selling it to someone who does not care/check if it is tainted.

Thanks. Yeah I am a bit surprised how little information (or hard to find) there is about how they do it.

Also right now Tether do not declare any USDT minted or in circulation on Bitcoin on their "Transparency" page [0]

But once again this is very new...

- [0] https://tether.to/en/transparency/?tab=usdt

The whole stablecoint-over-taproot-over-lightning is IMHO way underreported and underestimated in media. This stuff has the potencial to obsolete any payments indermediaries, while combining the truly decentralized bitcoin blockchain, with anonymous and instant lightning transfers using non-volatile stablecoins. No shitcoins, no other blockchains with questionable control patterns, no discussions whether bitcoin has a value or not etc.

As for the technology, issuing a fungible token on bitcoin can be done in minutes using tapd. Download and a couple of commands + one single anchor bitcoin transactions, and the token is minted. Just government regulation around stablecoins hasn't caught up (and probably won't, because banks will lobby against abolishing themselves).

The whole thing is very recent, and the ecosystem is not very mature or developed (i.e. hardly any lightning wallet supports transfering taproot assets). But taproot was enabled in 2021, and Tether announced a taproot stablecoin as early as January 2025: https://tether.io/news/tether-brings-usdt-to-bitcoins-lightn...

That would be very risky for Iran because the top stablecoins could be freezed. They are centralized.

No. Welcome to the petrobitcoin economy.

Edit: Piecing together from other comments, it sounds like these tolls are denominated in USD ($1 per barrel), but as an implementation detail, they're charging in BTC as the instrument of choice, not a stablecoin.

They phrase the tolls in USD "so the price is stable", and since the whole transaction is quick, BTC entails "just a small carry risk while holding". They sidestep the stablecoin technology, which is "risky for Iran because the top stablecoins could be freezed. They are centralized."

The latter comment was downvoted, possibly for paranoia, but Iran can't afford not to be paranoid. The major stablecoins at least claim to be custodied in Western institutions in a quasi-compliant-ish manner. If the USG started strong-arming Cantor, and so forth, who knows where that would end. Iran would much rather live with a tiny taste of BTC price volatility.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47692874

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47691369

So my read of this is:

- Iran is threading the needle, working within the limited options they have in a US-dominated world economy.

- The death of the petrodollar is slightly exaggerated here, although it's a small symbolic step, and obviously the broader war is going to have implications for US hegemony.

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