HAVANA – Popular NFT marketplace OpenSea banned the largest Cuban digital art project, NFTCubaART Friday, removing their collections from its platform.

A spokesperson for OpenSea told Decrypt, “Our Terms of Service explicitly prohibit sanctioned individuals…or services from using OpenSea,” referring to the decades long U.S. embargo of Cuba, begun in 1962 by President Kennedy, as the basis for their prohibition.

The Cuban ban came to light last week when OpenSea shut down the NFTcuba.ART NFT collection. The project took to Twitter to explain that buying art from Cuban artists is not included in the U.S. embargo. They also pointed out the incongruence of OpenSea’s gainsaying decision to conduct censorship within a web3 company. 

Other countries sanctioned by the U.S. which are also banned from OpenSea, include Russia, Syria, Iran, and North Korea, among several others.