Iran’s potential move to turn the Strait of Hormuz into a tolled passageway – requiring payments in cryptocurrency or CNY – has sparked lively debate about what this could mean for the yuan’s future. This includes renewed interest in the so‑called ‘petroyuan’, perhaps last discussed prominently near the start of the Russia–Ukraine war, when sanctions on Russia resulted in much of the country’s oil trade with China moving to the CNY.
One interesting argument was that, if the Iran war were to end with Iran successfully controlling the Strait of Hormuz, this could lead to a system in which payments for passage are collected in CNY, and eventually to oil trade flows through the Strait and into Asia being denominated in CNY. In this scenario, the Iran war would be seen as dealing a major blow to the petrodollar system, with the CNY emerging as a key beneficiary amid an acceleration towards a ‘petroyuan’ system, and the world taking another step towards a more multipolar order.
It’s not surprising why this topic has garnered interest and discussion. However, there are a few logical leaps that appear to occur here; it’s assumed that the trade going through the Strait would be priced in CNY, rather than just the fee for passage. This would require the cooperation of all of the Gulf states, and there hasn’t been anything to indicate that such a shift is currently in the works. It also assumes that Iran permanently assumes control of the Strait, and passing ships willingly pay the fees.
In the near term, the impact is likely to be very incremental. After all, there is not a strong level of clarity on Iran’s criteria for letting ships through the Strait of Hormuz, with only a small number of tankers currently permitted to transit. Among those ships that have secured passage, it is unclear whether or not a toll was paid, and whether the payments were made in CNY or other currencies.
In a thought exercise where we take the most optimistic assumptions, where traffic to the Strait of Hormuz is fully restored to around 100 vessels a day or 36k vessels a year, and that every single vessel that passed through the Strait ended up paying a USD 2mn equivalent fee in CNY, we’d still only get a somewhat paltry USD 72bn or RMB 491bn.
In a vacuum, this increases CNY demand and global usage. But how significant is that in the grand scale of things? Considering that China’s Crossborder International Payments System (CIPS) handled around RMB 180tn of payments in 2025, an extra RMB 491bn wouldn’t be negligible but far from a gamechanger.
Nonetheless, the fact that the CNY was requested as a payment currency certainly is something interesting to watch. It is a real-world example of the CNY’s rising clout and a vote of support for China acting as a counterweight to the US-dominated financial system.
