What the US list held in November 2026
Picture an exchange about to release a withdrawal. Before the coins leave, its software compares the destination with the list of Specially Designated Nationals, the SDN list kept by the US Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC).
The current SDN file, published on November 6, 2026 and downloaded for this entry three days later, holds 19,563 entries. Only 113 of them carry a crypto address, 1,064 different addresses in all.
Two networks dominate. Counted per ticker in OFAC’s advanced data file for the same publication, bitcoin has 533 listings and TRON 272, well ahead of Ethereum with 124 and USDT with 94.
Each address sits in its own field, labeled “Digital Currency Address” plus a dash and a ticker such as XBT or ETH, according to OFAC’s virtual currency FAQs. Its online search tool takes an address in the “ID #” box and returns exact matches only, with no fuzzy logic. Our free address checker runs the same exact match against the whole list without the address leaving your browser.
Why a clean match proves less than it seems
OFAC itself warns that its address listings “are not likely to be exhaustive.” The duty follows the person, not the string of characters. Under FAQ 560, US persons must block the property of anyone named on the list and of any entity owned 50 percent or more by blocked persons, so a wallet that belongs to a listed group but was never published still counts.
That is why OFAC’s October 2021 industry guidance asks firms to screen physical, wallet and IP addresses, and to re-screen customers when the lists are updated. Penalties are generally based on strict liability. A US person “may be held civilly liable for sanctions violations even without having knowledge or reason to know,” the guidance says.
One case in that document stands out. In 2020 a US digital asset company settled with OFAC after people with IP addresses in Crimea, Cuba, Iran, Sudan and Syria used its wallet service. The firm had logged those IP addresses for security and never screened them. The guidance also expects the customer details gathered during KYC to be screened at onboarding.
When a check comes back positive
A US firm that finds crypto it must block has to deny every party access to it. OFAC’s FAQ 646 says the firm must also report the holding within 10 business days and then once a year while it stays blocked, though it doesn’t have to convert the coins into dollars.
The customer may be told and can apply to OFAC for release. A suspicious activity report filed under US AML rules works the other way, since 31 CFR 1022.320 bars a money services business from revealing that one exists.
Britain applies the same logic. The general guidance from OFSI, the sanctions office inside HM Treasury, says cryptoassets count as funds or economic resources, and it names cryptoasset exchange providers and custodian wallet providers among the firms with their own duty to report to it.
For anyone paying a repeat supplier, the lesson from OFAC’s re-screening advice is simple. A check run in the spring says nothing about the file published this week.