I always use a VPN.

They will need higher-level verifications as soon as you start trading bitcoins with Rials. That's when they find out someone's Iranian.

BTW I just found this new local website. Its fees seem lower than the others.

They have approved my address now. That's not the problem anymore. Their only problem is me being Iranian, and they won't let me do trades until I get out of my country.

I can withdraw my bitcoins but I cannot make any trades to other advertisements, or make my own advertisement. I can only use it as a wallet.
Tell them to stay away from it unless they're not inside Iran and don't plan to exchange them for Rials.

I don't know what actually happened but I don't see any error when withdrawing my money. I just get an error when I try to place an advertisement for selling bitcoins.

I'm holding them for now, since I'm going to exchange them for Rials and Rial value is highly dependent on the political situations like the triggering of the dispute process by the EU.

I think maybe it had something to do with this topic, maybe they were concerned about their reputation. Because I had been sending them the same address document for the past week and they kept rejecting it. I didn't put any complaint on their Twitter or other sm. I also opened some tickets but they were answered after they proved my Tier 2 verification.
If someone had the same problem I would suggest them to first open a support ticket, and then if they did not respond they might want to try to tell their situation on some forum or somewhere that might endanger their reputation.

There are lots of Iranian websites trading bitcoins now, but normally they have higher fees and lower exchange rates. There's also HodlHodl which has discounts on their fees for Iranian citizens but it's not as popular yet. I don't know about Iranians living elsewhere but I think unless they want to trade their bitcoins to Rials they would be fine.

Fortunately, yes.
Thanks for your concern.

Well... Iran's both better and worse than what you think about it.
It's not "dangerous" to live here but it's not comfortable too.
To get a feeling of how it is to live here I would suggest you see the Peter Santenello series on his travel to Iran.
But about leaving here, that's not easy too. Since our currency value has declined our money and savings are worth nothing outside our country and if we want to move out we would leave everything behind and start our lives from absolute zero, which in many cases would be even harder than living inside our country.
I'm planning to apply for an educational visa to some country and study there for a while and then maybe come back to Iran, but after that I would have the chance to leave the country whenever I want.

Because of being Iranian.
It's not the first time I get banned for my nationality! even the most regular services ban us. You cannot play any Origin games if you live in Iran, you cannot update your Nvidia graphics card or Intel chipset drivers, you cannot access GitHub, and many others that have become a normal thing for me.

If you don't believe me, you can check my feedback on my lbtc account here.



Dude I'm not in North Korea I'm in Iran lol
We've got internet although we'll need to use a VPN since half of the websites are banned by our government and the other half are banned by yours.

Actually no. my account is suspended. I can only withdraw my money.

First of all, this wasn't in the first instance. I had been arguing with them for around 2 months over this problem. Second, they cannot hold my money because of their KYC terms which shouldn't have applied to me in the first place according to their own rules since I never had more than 1500 euros annual transaction amount. They can only prevent me from using their platform for trading bitcoins.
Third, I already provided them the required documentation for my address verification, but they kept rejecting it for no reason.

I've got some good news!

lbtc just accepted my address verification! 
I can withdraw all of my money now. I'm so excited! 

Thanks everyone for your support and ideas.

Yeah, I'm the same person.
That's a good idea, I will try that if they don't respond to my support tickets. Thanks for that.

I mean if lbtc was USA based I wouldn't trust them for sure. But I trusted them because they're based in Finland, while the EU is still a part of the JCPOA.
It seems like I was wrong...
You can't trust anybody if you don't have leverage.

That's exactly what I'm saying.
There's no reason for them to hold my money because I could not verify my address. Not to mention that according to their own rules and terms there's no need for accounts with less than 1500 euro income per year to verify their address. I have already verified my passport and identity.
They're just making an excuse to steal my money knowing that I would not be able to stand against them because of the sanctions.

I live with my parents and none of the utility bills are registered to my name. I only have my bank account which they don't seem to accept for some reason :/

I only thought they would keep me from trading on their platform, as they also claimed. I never thought they would hold my funds.


p.s. there are lots of Iranian businesses with .com domains  :D

So lately localbitcoins started to ban Iranian users from trading bitcoins on their website.

In the beginning, they claimed that we will be able to withdraw our funds at any time, and recently they started their new verification process which requires accounts with more than 1000 € annual transactions to verify their ID and provide their address.

Even though my account annual transaction amount had never been more than 1500 €, they are asking me for Tier 2 verification which includes address verification that I already provided them. They are now claiming that my address verification which was a credit card statement is "not valid", And all of that was only supposed to prevent me from making trades on their platform, not to prevent me from withdrawing my Bitcoins.

Now when I tried to withdraw my 0.063 bitcoins which is worth more than 100M Rials, equal to around 10 months of a teacher's salary in my country due to the recent fall of our currency value because of sanctions, I realized that they have banned me from making outgoing transactions! They have literally stolen my Bitcoins by justifying that I'm residing in a country in which localbitcoins is not available!

While we are already suffering from sanctions and economic pressures & instabilities which directly target the people, the worst thing that can happen is getting our money stolen.

Note that I'm a 21-year-old Electronics Engineering student and an ordinary citizen trying his best to have some source of income to be independent. It took me and my brother around 8 months to make that money (half of that is my brother's, and I'm ashamed of telling him what happened).
Already facing economic pressures I also have problems finding electronic parts for even my hobby projects and I have to pay 2-3 times the real price of each part I need. Just imagine your life without Amazon, eBay, aliexpress, etc., and also no international credit cards like Mastercard and Visacard.


If you have any idea about how I can take our money back I'd be glad to hear that.

I do travel abroad for like once a year at most, but many of my friends haven't been abroad ever, and most of the others that have been just had been to Iraq or Turkey for once or twice.
But yes when I travel overseas I load up my whole luggage with the parts that I need
Sending bitcoins to each other is not a problem but some payment systems that let you make payment pages also ban us, like BitPay. I should design and program my own payment webpage from scratch if needed. Anyways thanks for sharing your ideas.

What do you know about the so-called "Islamic countries"? How many of them have you been to? The things you think you know about us is just media propaganda.
I hope the series that IndigoTraveler just made on his travel to Iran could help open your eyes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0U3-7Ey3siA&list=PLN0FlxE6vY5BJbDJiGWk0gG00c2E07BSF

Nope, there are no "international" sanctions against Iran. "Most UN sanctions were lifted 16 January 2016, following the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action".
The remaining sanctions are only some related to human rights and some other related to military programs, which do not affect ordinary trades. The only reason that EU banks do not want to get involved with us is Trump's sanctions and the risk of getting banned by the US. Before Trump, our banks were a part of the SWIFT network and had no problem.