The United States government, like most nations, maintains a list of sanctioned individuals, companies and groups. OpenSea has complied with the US government's sanctions against Iran users and banned them from using the ETH/WETH NFT marketplace. (Cointelegraph)
One of your first thoughts might be, why ban Iran citizens from trading NFTs on OS?
The reality is, NFTs can be a significant store of value and the enemies of the US government may use NFTs to acquire or even conceal transfer of significant sums of money.
What else does this move by the US government illustrate?
Preventing Iranians from trading NFTs also shows that the US government has adapted to a decentralized world -- where money can be exchanged and funneled through various financial instruments, including NFTs and alt coins that do not require any central actor as gateway for the transactions.
SWIFT no more & The Scanners War
While SWIFT enables some 3,700+ organizations (including major banks) to be a central controller of who "gets to play" in various financial circuits and ecosystems, it cannot stop or delay crypto trades that occur via smart contract between peers and away from centralized exchanges.
Despite transactions being openly available on scanner sites, nations must use many new kinds of software to collate addresses and transaction details. To understand and identify money flows and individuals or groups on the blockchain, they hire engineers and blockchain experts, as well as established companies like Chainalysis.
Chainalysis' cooperation with governments and corporations will lead to a new war -- we will call 'The Scanners War'.
The Blockchain Warriors in the Scanners War
In time, big data blockchain analysis companies will become the foes of decentralization and egalitarianism as they partner with government and corporations with vertical-only interests.
The enterprising open source engineers who rally for and contribute to blockchain protocols will stage a front-line of battle. They will steadily provide further destabilizing, empowering blockchain tech in github repositories and in agile hacker groups as well as in pseudo partnerships with known entities in the blockchain ecosystem.
They will strive to anonymize, entangle, decentralize and establish P2P as the only acceptable form value exchange: the new gold and silver, and the new Rebalance of power. They will do this because blockchain tech remains the answer to centuries of dis-empowerment felt by the lower classes and because in their minds, it is their duty to do what only they can do, on behalf of the powerless.