Iranian Users Suffer from OpenSea’s Compliance with US Sanctions

The crypto has long been touted as a way to make business transactions outside the interference of international governments, but it became clear a few weeks ago that the space had its limits. In early April, OpenSea, one of the main NFT marketplaces, had been deleting the accounts of users and collectors from Iran, a country that is currently under sanctions from the U.S., with no prior warning or explanation, according to Shanti Escalante at Artnews.

Iranian artist Arefeh Norouzii noticed her account had been deplatformed when one of her followers told her that they had realized that her OpenSea profile was no longer active. Norouzii went to check and also found nothing there—her NFTs had vanished. While Norouzii can mint them again and sell them on other NFT platforms that have are not currently adhering to the U.S. sanctions, OpenSea is the biggest NFT platform, and selling her work on the site has constituted a large part of her income.