Report contents
MENA · Developing
Iraq
Crypto Livability Index 2025·data to 31 Dec 2025
Scoreboard
Five pillars, then the 22 sub-pillars scored 0 to 4. Empty sub-scores are held out of the total, not zeroed.
The number behind the rank
| Raw capability score | 15 / 84 |
| P2P liquidity bonus (tie-breaker) | +1 |
| Inflation 2.4% · unbanked 70% · remittances 0.2% GDP · capital controls 0.8 · sanctions 0.25 | CNI 0.361 |
| Need multiplier | ×1.042 |
| Livability score | 0.186 |
Raw 15/84 = 0.179 capability. Crypto-Necessity Index 0.36, from five components: inflation 2.4% (three-year average 2023 to 2025), unbanked 70% of adults, remittances 0.2% of GDP, capital-control intensity 0.80 (Heritage 2026 derived; KAOPEN excludes this country), sanctions exposure 0.25. Need multiplier ×1.04. Livability score 0.186, rank #78 of 79.
Three findings
One of only ten countries on earth with a complete crypto ban
The Central Bank of Iraq's 2017 prohibition, formalised by Circular No. 125/5/9 in November 2021 and reaffirmed in 2022, bars banks, payment service providers, and electronic-card networks from any crypto dealing, and extends to mining. Every regulation sub-score reads zero, and Iraq ties Algeria and Nepal at the index floor of 15 raw points.
A ban on institutions, not on the youth trading dinars for dollars
No statute criminalises individual possession or P2P (peer-to-peer trading between individuals), and an in-person cash-for-Tether market is popular among young Iraqis: Binance P2P trades dinar pairs through local banks, Bybit added dinar support, and Kurdcoin runs brokerage-style desks. The April 2025 Erbil security directive shutting OTC desks targets companies, not the street-level holder.
Dinar instability quietly building a dollar-stable habit
As the dinar fluctuates and the banking system stays dysfunctional, residents turn to dollar-pegged stablecoins as a safer store than the banks, the same dynamic that lifts Argentina, at far smaller scale. Against a 1.16 billion dollar remittance baseline, an estimated 12 to 35 million dollars in crypto inflows keeps Iraq's corridor utility above the negligible floor a full ban would imply.
In one line
"Iraq runs one of the world's ten complete crypto bans, and Baghdad's youth still trade dinars for Tether by hand. The prohibition reaches the banks; it does not reach the cash exchanged between two phones in a market."
Watch in 2026
Trajectory 0/4, banned and tightening. The 2017 CBI ban was reinforced in April 2025 by the Kurdistan Region Interior Ministry's new enforcement layer with explicit referral to the judiciary, while the CBI advances a state-controlled CBDC announced in March 2025. The added regional enforcement and the CBDC pivot both point away from liberalisation.