Trump announces US will remove Syria from terrorism sanctions list, opening door for crypto markets

President Donald Trump announced that the US would remove Syria from its terrorism sanctions list, a seismic shift in foreign policy that effectively ends more than four decades of financial restrictions on the war-torn nation. The announcement came during Trump’s visit to Riyadh on May 13, 2025, following discussions with Saudi and Turkish leaders about Syria’s future after the fall of the Assad regime.

What the sanctions rollback actually looks like

The formal mechanics followed through an Executive Order issued on June 30, 2025, which took effect on July 1. That order revoked six prior executive orders that had structured the comprehensive Syria sanctions regime over the years.

The result: 518 individuals and entities were removed from the Treasury Department’s Specially Designated Nationals (SDN) List. In English, that means hundreds of Syrian businesses and people can now interact with the global financial system without triggering compliance alarms at every bank and exchange on the planet.

Not everyone got a clean slate, though. Targeted sanctions against former president Bashar al-Assad and certain associates remain firmly in place.

Meanwhile, reviews for designations related to Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), the militant group whose leadership has been central to post-Assad governance discussions, progressed through 2025. HTS leader al-Sharaa and other figures saw reviews that resulted in their removal from certain sanctions lists by late 2025.

The crypto angle nobody’s ignoring

Binance has already lifted geographic restrictions for Syrian users, enabling access to trading in cryptocurrencies including Bitcoin. For a population that had been largely confined to a cash-based economy thanks to years of civil war and international isolation, this represents a genuinely new financial on-ramp.

Syria’s financial ecosystem had been progressively strangled by layers of sanctions, most notably the Caesar Syria Civilian Protection Act of 2019, which imposed some of the most severe economic penalties in US foreign policy history. The practical effect was that Syrian citizens couldn’t access international banking, couldn’t use major payment platforms, and couldn’t participate in digital asset markets without putting counterparties at legal risk.

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