OFAC SDN List: What It Means for Crypto Users and How It Affects Your Wallet

When you send or receive cryptocurrency, you might be unknowingly dealing with someone on the OFAC SDN List, a U.S. government list of individuals, companies, and entities banned from doing business with Americans. Also known as Specially Designated Nationals, this list is enforced by the Office of Foreign Assets Control and directly impacts crypto transactions worldwide. If a wallet address, exchange, or project is tied to someone on this list, your transaction could be frozen, blocked, or flagged — even if you had no idea who you were dealing with.

This isn’t theoretical. Exchanges like Kraken, Coinbase, and Bitstamp automatically scan wallet addresses against the OFAC SDN List. If a user tries to send crypto to a sanctioned address, the transaction gets rejected. Some users have had funds locked for weeks just because they received a small amount from a compromised wallet. The list includes not just known criminals, but also entities linked to terrorism, narcotics, or governments under U.S. sanctions — like certain Russian or Iranian crypto firms. Even if a project is based in a non-sanctioned country, if its founders or developers appear on the list, the whole token could become toxic.

The OFAC SDN List doesn’t just affect big exchanges. It impacts anyone using decentralized platforms. DEXs like Uniswap or PancakeSwap don’t screen addresses, so you’re on your own. But if you later try to cash out to a regulated exchange, your funds could get caught in the net. That’s why knowing who’s on the list matters — not just for compliance, but for protecting your own assets. Tools like Etherscan and blockchain explorers let you check if an address is flagged, but most users don’t know how or when to use them.

What you’ll find in the posts below are real cases where people got caught by the OFAC SDN List — whether through airdrops tied to sanctioned entities, exchanges that ignored compliance, or tokens that suddenly vanished because their developers were blocked. You’ll also see how some platforms built tools to avoid these traps, and why some crypto projects died overnight just because of a single name on a government list. This isn’t about politics. It’s about survival in a world where your wallet can be shut down without warning.