Internet access in Iran was blocked by the federal government on Thursday as protests spread across the Middle East country, raising the query: Can its residents proceed to make use of crypto?
According to Statista, about seven million people in a foreign country's 92 million population are crypto users. TRM Labs tracked total crypto flow in Iran of around $3.7 billion between January and July 2025.
But web access was disrupted within the country as protests began against the worsening economic situation and after the Iranian rial hit a record low against the US dollar.
Some outside observers, comparable to Bitwise CEO Hunter Horsley, have suggested that buying Bitcoin (BTC) as a store of wealth may very well be an answer.
Source: Cloudflare Radar
Options for crypto without web
Without access to the web, it is going to be far harder for Iranians to conduct cryptocurrency transactions. However, several technologies available today could make a difference.
Elon Musk's Starlink satellite web equipment, for instance, can provide high-speed web in areas where there was previously no service.
There have been calls for Musk to make use of Starlink to revive web within the country, as he did during a previous blackout in June 2025. According to unconfirmed reports, Musk quietly agreed to the request.
Bitcoin infrastructure company Blockstream could offer an alternative choice for crypto users. Its satellite network can transmit Bitcoin data anywhere on the planet without using the Internet.
Starlink provides high-speed, two-way web by connecting user dishes to satellites that relay data worldwide via laser and ground stations.
Some clever users have also discovered that Bitchat, Jack Dorsey's decentralized peer-to-peer messaging service that uses a Bluetooth mesh network to send messages, also can allow Bitcoin transaction data to be sent between phones.
However, a tool with web is required in some unspecified time in the future before it might probably be confirmed on-chain.
Chromestats show that Bitchat has been downloaded greater than 1.4 million times since its launch, including over 19,828 within the last day and greater than 460,724 within the last week.
Additional tools in development for offline crypto usage
Several tools are actually within the works that enable offline use of crypto.
Darkwire, a tool that uses long-range radio to construct a decentralized mesh network to send data like Bitcoin transactions without the web, was unveiled in May 2025 by its pseudonymous creator Cyb3r17.
Similar to Blockstreams satellites and Bitchat, a tool on the network eventually needs web connection for the transaction to be verified and added to the blockchain. Darkwire is listed on GitHub as undergoing a serious rewrite.
In 2022, a South African software developer, Kgothatso Ngako, was reported to have developed one other solution called Machankura. According to a March 2023 Forbes report and the project's website, the tool allows users to send and receive Bitcoin via phones without an online connection by leveraging the cellular network.
