Cuba

OpenSea blocks Cuban artists from the platform due to US sanctions

OpenSea’s terms of service explicitly prohibit individuals and organizations from sanctioned regions from using its platform.

Nonfungible token (NFT) marketplace OpenSea has been banning artists and collectors from Cuba, citing United States sanctions as the key reason behind its action.

According to a report published by Artnet, 30 artists and collectors have been banned from the popular NFT marketplace until now. The most noted artist to face the axe includes well-known Havana-based artists Gabriel Guerra Bianchini and Fábrica de Arte Cubano.

OpenSea marketplace has mentioned in its terms of service that it explicitly prohibits sanctioned individuals and individuals in sanctioned jurisdictions. The NFT marketplace’s adhesion to United States sanctions was widely known and included countries such as Venezuela, Iran and Syria. However, the recent blocking of Cuban artists adds the country to that list as well.

“We continue to holistically evaluate what other measures need to be taken to serve our community and comply with applicable law,” an OpenSea Spokesperson told Cointelegraph.

A Twitter profile called NFT Cuba Art revealed earlier in December that OpenSea had blocked them from viewing or listing their art while they still had access to their wallets. Erich García Cruz, the founder of Bit Remasa, responded that their NFT collections were banned too. Cryptocuban founder Gabriel Bianchini added that the future of Web3 doesn’t look decentralized.

Apart from OpenSea, several crypto platforms had to shut down their services for Russian customers in the wake of the new European Union sanctions issued after the war in Ukraine began earlier this year.

Related: Proactive sanctions can help spare the ecosystem: Chainalysis exec

While the cryptocurrency ecosystem is built on the ethos of decentralization, the majority of the intermediaries and firms facilitating various services still very much work like most centralized Web2 companies. 

The crypto community was not very pleased with the auctions of the NFT marketplace and called for an end to intermediaries. Another user said that there is a need for real decentralized platforms that don’t care about nationalities

Cuban NFT artists say they face censorship within the crypto market

“Blockchain is decentralised and doesn’t obey any governments, so no embargo affects us there,” NFT artist Gabriel Bianchini explained.

Cuba’s art market shut down completely during the pandemic, leading the community to turn to digital markets for survival. However, artists say that they remain censored due to the United States sanctions against Cuba, with U.S. based platforms like the nonfungible token (NFT) marketplace OpenSea going to the extremes of deleting content and accounts linked to the country itself.

The censorship began in January with the sudden closing of the account of Fabrica de Arte Cubano — an art gallery that provided exposure to emerging artists.

As Cuban visual artist and founder of the project CryptoCubans, Gabriel Bianchini, explains: “The embargo’s sanctions are so vague that platforms just prefer to not take the risk and close our accounts.”

This type of censorship is a common occurrence for Cuban artists exposing their work on the Internet. Ernesto Cisneros, a musician and NFT artist, recounted his own experience as a tragic one after losing all his earnings on Patreon due to the embargo during the pandemic. This experience brought him to Web3, unaware that the same story would repeat again. He recounted:

“I helped to onboard many artists to web3. But then OpenSea started to block Cuban artists one after the other. I stopped using that marketplace altogether when I learned they were censoring because of the embargo.”

Adding to the consequences of censorship, they believe that Cuban artists have an increased susceptibility to being victims of hacks. Such is the case for Avinro, an NFT artist from Havana. “There are antivirus programs that don’t function correctly because I’m in Cuba,” he says, alleging that the lack of proper digital protection allowed an attacker — passing for an interested buyer — to send him a virus via Zoom link which should otherwise have been detected by the software. Avinro claimed that this oversight allowed the attacker to take over his MetaMask wallet, resulting in the theft of his earnings and the loss of his user profiles on various NFT marketplaces.

However, there is apparent progress on the technological side being made through official channels. Cuba’s government recently announced that it is open to the use of cryptocurrencies, which has fostered hopes of adoption at a rapid pace. Even if this comes to pass, however, it will still be highly regulated for citizens. Now, the arrival of blockchain smart contracts is a game changer for Cubans looking to send their messages back into the world. Bianchini said:

“There’s nothing more independent than a smart contract. Once you know how to program them, there’s no stopping you. What happened with Fábrica de Arte was an alarm to show the community towards a new direction. I believe we’ll build our independence, because now we have that chance.”