Iranian students suffering from sanctions pay tuition in bitcoins

Stranded Iranian students in the United Kingdom are using Bitcoin as a tool to circumvent economic sanctions imposed on their country, according to a Guardian report. Parsa Sadat, a law student at the University of Reading, is one of scores of Iranian students unable to pay tuition fees after US President Donald Trump imposed sanctions on Iran last month.

Sadat and his classmates risk losing their student visas if they do not pay their tuition fees. Sadat's family has the necessary funds, but cannot send them to him because US sanctions have prohibited money transfers from Iran.

As a result, the university authorities advised Sadat to go home during the holidays and bring the money with him (the amount is £5,350) to pay for the next academic term. Sadat, who is in his final year at university, said he has already been reminded about payment five times and threatened with expulsion. However, even if he went home and collected the money, returning with that amount of cash from a country that has been classified as a high-risk country by the British Foreign Office is also not possible. One of Sadat's lecturers, Professor Mai Sato, considered it dangerous to transport such a sum from Iran to the United Kingdom, calling on the university to speak out against the injustice suffered by students.

After the sanctions were put in place, Iran's commercial banks were excluded from the SWIFT network. As a result, Iran's Central Bank is unable to do business with financial institutions around the world.

Despite the sanctions, the UK government has promised that it will continue to try to develop banking relationships with Iranian companies. The prime minister's spokesman said he "regrets the resumption of US sanctions" and the country has moved to resume trade with Iran, even as banks shy away from commercial business due to the severity of the sanctions. 

While they are waiting for a solution to their problems, some students have found a temporary solution to transfer funds from Iran. Mazyar Bahari, editor of local news outlet IranWire.com, told The Guardian that some students are now using "bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies to receive money" from their relatives in Iran. 

In an interview with local television Alireza Daliri, Iranian authorities said the country was already working on creating a digital currency that would help the country survive sanctions.

The move was criticized by the US Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN)... The agency has asked exchanges to monitor the use of cryptocurrencies by Iranians, who use them as a means of circumventing sanctions.

According to https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles