Iran's national currency just hit another record low, and the culprit is pretty clear: escalating nuclear sanctions are choking what's left of the country's struggling economy. When a currency tanks this hard, it's not just about inflation anymore—it's a full-blown confidence crisis. Local purchasing power evaporates, imports become unaffordable, and citizens scramble for alternatives.

This kind of fiat meltdown historically drives people toward decentralized assets as a hedge. Whether it's gold, dollars, or crypto, anything that isn't controlled by a collapsing central authority suddenly looks appealing. We've seen this pattern play out in Venezuela, Turkey, and Lebanon. When traditional finance fails, alternatives emerge not as speculation but as survival tools.

The geopolitical dimension matters too. Sanctions don't just damage economies—they reshape how people interact with money itself. Cut off from SWIFT and global banking, sanctioned nations become testing grounds for alternative payment rails. That's where peer-to-peer networks and borderless protocols start making real-world sense, not just theoretical sense.