Rial, Iran’s official currency, has failed in 2026. Hyperinflation is chewing through savings every single day. Sanctions are piled on top of bad decisions and endless geopolitical pressure. Every day people wake up to less money. Families struggle to buy basics while everything they have saved disappears. This feels too familiar. Lebanon went through the exact same crisis that started in late 2019. The same kind of bank freeze, the same worthless currency slide, the same desperate search for anything of value. Bitcoin then proved to be the financial safe haven. Signs point to it doing the same in Iran now.
Beirut and Tehran are caught in the same mess
Lebanon hit the wall as banks locked up accounts tightly. Dollar savings stuck, then devalued hard to a pound that kept falling. Over 90 percent are gone. Queues at ATMs turned into fights. Protests broke out everywhere. Money sent from family abroad became the only lifeline, but even these funds struggled to get through and cost a lot in fees.
Iran has the same stranglehold. Sanctions cut off normal trade. Inflation is running rampant. Reports put crypto activity close to $8 billion by 2025. People are quickly moving Bitcoin directly to personal wallets. They worry about freezing or larger drops. Even the central bank is seizing stablecoins like Tether to avoid restrictions.
In Lebanon, attitudes quickly reversed. People who once ignored Bitcoin started running to it because nothing else was working. Peer-to-peer trading exploded everywhere, esp. in Telegram groups. No banks are necessary. Money transfers landed cleanly. Corner shops took it for bread or gas. An entire underground economy kept running while the official one died.
The raw reality of Lebanon’s collapse
Banks didn’t just slow down withdrawals. They took chunks out of deposits. Promised dollars became local currency worth next to nothing. Trust disappeared overnight. People who planned carefully lost retirement money, business money and everything built up over decades.
Bitcoin cut through it. It allowed holders to hold something no policy could touch or blow away. Keeping private keys on hardware wallets meant real control. Verify transactions yourself. Transfers crossed borders in minutes, no intermediaries skimmed. Ups and downs happened, but over the long term it held up far better than the pound ever could.
The problems remained real. The power was constant. The internet went down. Outside Beirut, liquidity remained thin. Early on, masses were burned by shady services because they didn’t know any better. However, groups quickly emerged. Online chats, meetings in cafes. People taught each other: backup the seeds properly, run your own node, skip guardians. The crisis forced learning quickly. The clearest lesson that sticks: Leave Bitcoin with someone else and risk losing it to hacks, freezes or sudden changes in the rules. True ownership means keys in your control.
What Iran can learn from Lebanon’s experience
Iran follows a similar path. Protests show that anger is boiling over. Rial continues to fall. Onchain data makes it clear that people are moving to self-sufficiency to block seizures or worse inflation.
The government’s signals are mixed. Limits on mining collide with tests using crypto for import. For ordinary people, however, Bitcoin remains simple: no one stops transfers, no borders block it, value holds outside the control of the state. Stablecoins cover day-to-day. Bitcoin is the savings.
Practices that worked in Lebanon transfer right over. Find a reliable non-custodial wallet and backup your seed set. Create a network of peer-to-peer contacts when fiat comes in or out. These basics let the Lebanese people ride out the worst. They offer the same shot in Iran.
Sure, obstacles continue: rules change, the internet fails in spots, prices fluctuate. It still beats staying fully pegged to a currency that keeps failing. Lebanon proved that waiting for the government to fix things rarely works. Early action saved what could be saved.
Takes back control when systems fail
Lebanon and Iran reveal how quickly centralized finance is crumbling. Overdrafts, account locks and financial isolation cause innocent citizens to take the hit every time. Bitcoin changes the game: no authentication required, no one else bears the risk if the keys remain yours.
The collapse of Lebanon forever changed the country’s economy. Money shifted from being a survival tool, forcing people to learn about custody and real ownership. Iran faces the same lesson now: Trust banks that fail or take the tool that returns power.
The rial’s sharp fall signals more than just trouble. It forces change. Lebanon produced tougher people who learned what ownership actually means. Iran also has the opening for it. Move before more disappear. Check everything yourself. Build stacks. Hold the keys tight. Create true freedom. No one delivers it. You claim it back, one satoshi at a time.
