Reports that some ships have been asked to pay yuan or cryptocurrency tolls for safe passage through the Strait of Hormuz have pushed digital settlement into one of the world’s most sensitive trade corridors.
The Strait of Hormuz is a key route for global energy markets. The US Energy Information Administration has described it as the world’s most important oil transit chokepoint, with oil flows through the strait averaging 20 million barrels per day in 2024, equal to around 20 per cent of global petroleum liquids consumption.
For Joe David, CEO of Nephos Group, a UK-founded accounting and advisory firm with specialist expertise in digital assets, crypto compliance and financial reporting, the reports are significant because they place digital assets in a very different context from the usual debate around crypto adoption.
David says the issue is less about whether crypto is entering the mainstream and more about how settlement works when conventional financial rails are restricted, politicised or unavailable.
“This is not about belief in crypto,” he says. “It is about utility under constraint.”
Crypto as infrastructure under pressure
David sees the Hormuz reports as a different kind of crypto story. Rather than investment or institutional adoption, he says they point to payment becoming part of access, enforcement and control in a strategic trade route.
“That is not a fringe use case,” David says. “It is the intersection of geopolitics, trade enforcement and digital settlement happening in one of the most important corridors in the global economy.”
Control over the Strait of Hormuz has long carried geopolitical weight. The reported use of digital settlement adds another layer to that leverage: payment becomes part of the access mechanism itself.
“If you want passage, you pay,” he says. “And you pay in a way that cannot be easily blocked, reversed or intercepted.”
That is where Bitcoin becomes relevant. Iran’s access to global banking infrastructure has been heavily restricted by sanctions, meaning traditional settlement routes can be monitored, restricted or shut down. A decentralised payment route changes the mechanics of that pressure.
“Iran does not have reliable access to global banking infrastructure,” David says. “That is the intended outcome of years of sanctions. Traditional settlement routes are monitored, restricted and, when required, shut down. Bitcoin offers a way around that. No intermediary, no clearing bank, no dependency on a system that can be switched off.”
Bitcoin and stablecoins are not the same
David also draws a distinction between Bitcoin and stablecoins, which are often grouped together in discussions about digital asset payments. Both may sit outside conventional banking rails, but they do not create the same financial exposure.
“Stablecoins allow actors to retain dollar exposure while bypassing banking rails,” he says. “Bitcoin does something more fundamental. It removes the need for a sovereign currency altogether at the point of settlement. There is no issuer, no central authority and no direct mechanism for external control.”
That distinction is important in a sanctions context. Stablecoins may offer a faster or less bank-dependent route to dollar-linked settlement. Bitcoin, by contrast, removes the issuer and the sovereign currency from the settlement point altogether.
“For a state operating under sanctions, that neutrality is not theoretical,” David says. “It is a feature.”
For shipping companies, the calculation is very different. A vessel operator faced with a cryptocurrency payment demand is not simply paying a toll. It may also have to manage price exposure, execution risk and legal uncertainty, potentially under severe time pressure.
“They are not just paying a toll,” David says. “They are managing real-time price exposure in a volatile asset, under tight execution windows, in a legal environment that is at best unclear.”
The compliance strain
The reports also point to a practical problem for accounting, audit and compliance teams. Global trade systems are built around identifiable institutions, standard records, known counterparties and established reporting processes. A cryptocurrency-denominated toll, especially one linked to a high-risk jurisdiction or uncertain counterparty, does not fit neatly into that structure.
“Existing frameworks assume transactions pass through identifiable institutions, with clear audit trails and established reporting standards,” David says. “A Bitcoin-denominated toll, executed under time pressure between counterparties that may not be fully visible, does not fit neatly into those models.”
Crypto transactions can be tracked on-chain, but that does not mean they are simple to account for or easy to reconcile with existing governance processes. The issue is not only whether a payment happened. It is how the payer records it, values it, explains it and assesses the legal and compliance risk attached to it.
This is especially uncomfortable in trade, where payment, documentation, insurance, sanctions screening and contractual obligations are usually expected to move through recognised channels. When settlement happens outside those channels, the record may exist, but it may not sit where institutions are used to looking for it.
Not a replacement for fiat
David is not arguing that Bitcoin is about to replace fiat currencies in global trade. Pricing, liquidity and stability remain tied to traditional financial systems. The Hormuz reports matter, in his view, because they show what can happen at the edges of that system when access is restricted.
“None of this suggests that Bitcoin is about to replace fiat currencies in global trade,” he says. “Pricing, liquidity and stability still sit firmly with traditional systems. What it does show is that in environments where those systems are restricted or politicised, alternatives are not just theoretical. They are being used.”
That is a narrower, but more serious, point than the usual argument about crypto adoption. Digital assets do not need to replace mainstream payment rails to become relevant. They only need to be available in the moments when those rails cannot operate, or when one side of a transaction is trying to avoid them.
A signal for global trade
For Nephos, the bigger issue is whether the institutions around global trade are prepared for settlement to happen outside the systems they were built to oversee.
“The Strait of Hormuz is not an isolated experiment,” David says. “It is a high-stakes example of how quickly financial infrastructure can adapt when required.”
That does not mean digital assets are better than traditional rails in every context. David’s argument is more specific: they can become useful when other payment options are limited, blocked or politically constrained.
“Digital assets are stepping in where traditional rails cannot operate,” he says. “Not because they are better in every context, but because they are available when other options are not.”
For regulators, accountants and financial institutions, that leaves a harder question. The role of digital assets in global trade may not arrive through neat institutional adoption or carefully managed pilots. It may emerge first in pressured environments, where access, sanctions and settlement collide.
“The more pressing issue is whether the institutions responsible for regulating, accounting for and relying on that trade are prepared for a system where settlement can happen outside the channels they were built to oversee,” David says.
