The rial, Iran’s official currency, went bankrupt in 2026. Hyperinflation is eating into savings every day. Sanctions add to bad decisions and endless geopolitical pressure. Every day people wake up with less money. Families are scrambling to buy basic necessities while everything they have saved disappears. This sounds too familiar. Lebanon went through exactly the same crisis from the end of 2019. The same type of banking freeze, the same fall of worthless currency, the same desperate search for anything of value. Bitcoin then proved to be this financial refuge. There are signs that the same is true in Iran.
Beirut and Tehran are stuck in the same mess
Lebanon hit the wall when banks strictly locked their accounts. Savings in dollars remained blocked, then sharply devalued into a pound which continued to collapse. More than 90 percent have disappeared. Queues at vending machines turned into fights. Protests broke out everywhere. Money sent by family abroad has become the only lifeline, but even these funds have had difficulty arriving and are costly in fees.
Iran faces the same strangulation. Sanctions have disrupted normal trade. Inflation is spiraling out of control. Reports put crypto activity at nearly $8 billion in 2025. People are quickly moving Bitcoin directly into their personal wallets. They worry about frost or heavier falls. Even the central bank is grabbing stablecoins like Tether to avoid restrictions.
In Lebanon, attitudes quickly changed. People who once ignored Bitcoin started running to it because nothing else was working. Peer-to-peer exchanges have exploded everywhere, in particular. in Telegram groups. No bank is needed. Remittances arrived safely. Convenience stores took it for bread or gasoline. An entire underground economy continued to operate while the official economy collapsed.
The raw reality of Lebanon’s collapse
Banks haven’t just slowed down withdrawals. They removed pieces of the deposits. The promised dollars became a local currency that was worth almost nothing. Trust disappeared overnight. People who planned carefully lost their retirement money, their business cash flow, and everything they had built over decades.
Bitcoin has overcome this. This allowed holders to keep something that no policy could touch or inflate. Holding private keys on hardware wallets meant real control. Check the transactions yourself. Remittances crossed borders in minutes, without an intermediary. There have been rises and falls in prices, but in the long run the pound has held up far better than sterling ever could.
The problems remained real. The power was constantly out. The Internet went down. Outside of Beirut, liquidity remained limited. Early on, many were burned by questionable services because they didn’t know any better. However, the groups appeared quickly. Online chats, meeting in cafes. People taught themselves: save seeds properly, run your own node, avoid custodians. The crisis forced us to learn quickly. The clearest lesson remained: leave Bitcoin to someone else and risk losing it to hacks, freezes, or sudden rule changes. True ownership means the keys are under your control.
What Iran can learn from Lebanon’s experience
Iran is following a similar path. The protests show the anger that is boiling over. The rial continues to fall. Onchain data clearly shows that people are taking lockdown to block foreclosures or worse inflation.
Government signals are mixed. Mining limits conflict with testing using cryptography for imports. For ordinary people, however, Bitcoin remains simple: no one stops transfers, no borders block it, its value escapes state control. Stablecoins cover everyday life. Bitcoin is savings.
The practices that worked in Lebanon can be directly transposed. Find a reliable non-custodial wallet and save your seed phrase. Create a peer-to-peer network of contacts when Fiat enters or exits. These bases allow the Lebanese people to overcome the worst. They offer the same chance in Iran.
Of course, obstacles persist: the rules change, the Internet fails in places, prices fluctuate. It’s still better than remaining entirely tied to a currency that keeps failing. Lebanon has proven that waiting for the government to fix things rarely works. Early action saved what could be saved.
Regain control when systems fail
Lebanon and Iran show how centralized finance is rapidly collapsing. Overcharging, account locking and economic isolation mean that innocent citizens suffer the brunt every time. Bitcoin is a game changer: no approval is required, no one else bears the risk if the keys remain yours.
Lebanon’s collapse changed its economy forever. Money has moved from being a survival tool, forcing people to learn about custody and actual ownership. Iran today faces the same lesson: depend on bankrupt banks or seize the tool that restores power.
The rial’s sharp fall signals more than just trouble. This pushes change. Lebanon produced tougher people who learned what ownership really means. Iran also has an opening for this. Move before others disappear. Check everything yourself. Build piles. Hold the keys firmly. Create real freedom. Nobody puts it back. You collect it, one satoshi at a time.
