That year, an Iranian shoemaker with a bitcoin-only e-commerce shop called Persian Shoes reached out to the Bitcoin community. CEO Mor Roghani wrote on his website that he could not take other forms of payment to sell his products worldwide. He explained, “the problem is we operate in Iran and most payment systems either are not willing to serve us at all or impose a huge risk on our business.” While bitcoin has been helping him circumvent his payments problem, sanctions placed on the country by the US still make it illegal for US residents to purchase goods from the country.