What the November 9, 2026 file holds
OFAC’s main sanctions file, published on November 9, 2026, has 19,563 entries. Just over half, 10,110, are companies and other entities. Another 7,541 are people. Ships and planes fill the rest, 1,570 vessels and 342 aircraft, since OFAC can list property as well as its owners.
Every entry carries at least one program tag naming its legal basis, and the file uses 72. The Russia program under Executive Order 14024 is by far the largest, on 6,346 entries, followed by the terrorism tag SDGT on 3,360.
Crypto is a small corner of it. Counting the entries with a field whose label begins “Digital Currency Address,” there are 113, and by program the top three are CYBER2, a cyber-related program, with 27, SDGT with 24 and the illicit-drugs order EO14059 with 18. Sanctions screening is the process firms run against those fields.
Older than crypto by decades
Sanctions at the Treasury go back well over a century. Its history page starts with Secretary Gallatin’s measures against Great Britain before the War of 1812. OFAC as such was formally created in December 1950, after China entered the Korean War and President Truman blocked Chinese and North Korean assets. A wartime forerunner, the Office of Foreign Funds Control, had been set up in 1940.
Crypto arrived late. On November 28, 2018 OFAC identified digital currency addresses for the first time, one bitcoin address each for two Iran-based men, Mohammad Ghorbaniyan and Ali Khorashadizadeh, under CYBER2. Both entries, and both addresses, were still in the November 2026 file, the first two of 1,080 crypto address listings on the list by then.
What a listing means
Blocking means freezing, OFAC explains in FAQ 9 of its basic FAQs. The property is not seized and the blocked person keeps title, but nobody may transfer, withdraw or otherwise deal in it without OFAC’s permission. US persons are also generally barred from dealing with anyone on the list.
The SDN list is not the only one. FAQ 91 says OFAC also keeps lists of people and companies under non-blocking sanctions, and its consolidated non-SDN file dated November 4, 2026 has 486 entries, none with a crypto address. Some parties are blocked without being named at all, among them companies owned 50 percent or more by listed persons and the governments of Cuba, Iran, North Korea and Venezuela.
Getting off the list takes a petition. A listed person files through OFAC’s reconsideration portal under 31 CFR 501.807, giving the name and the unique ID number of the entry, according to the removal page.
Removals happen. On March 21, 2025, OFAC deleted the Tornado Cash entry and its long run of Ethereum addresses, while a separate entry for Roman Semenov, whose details include a tornado.cash email address, stayed under a North Korea program. His entry still carries eight Ethereum addresses.
Mistakes worth avoiding
Some businesses ask for proof that a wallet or a company is clean. OFAC itself issues no such document. FAQ 469 says OFAC “does not issue non-inclusion certificates” and does not publish a “safe list,” so a paper claiming to be OFAC clearance should raise questions.
Someone who simply shares a name with a listed person is not supposed to petition for removal either. The removal page points such people to OFAC’s compliance hotline instead.
A quick exact match of any address against the current file takes seconds with a free address checker. Run it again before each payment, because the list changes with every publication.