Bitcoin arrives in Cuba

Digital money has recently become popular on the island.

The Cuban government assured a few days ago that it will recognize and regulate cryptocurrencies in order to make payments throughout the island as of 2022. A resolution published in the Official Gazette of the Cuban state ensures that the country's Central Bank will establish a series of rules and laws to regulate cryptocurrencies and will determine how to grant licenses to service providers related to them within Cuba.

The announcement comes just as the Central American nation of El Salvador is preparing to officially recognize the use of Bitcoin as a legal and legitimate currency, in a bid to encourage remittances from its citizens living abroad when its crypto law enters into force on December 7.

Cryptocurrencies arrive in Cuba

The Cuban resolution, which will come into force from next year, regulates "the use of certain virtual assets in commercial transactions, as well as the granting of licenses to providers" of these services in "operations related to financial activities, exchange and collection or payment", as extracted from the Official Gazette of the Cuban Government.

The popularity of cryptocurrencies has grown exponentially among economic and financial think tanks on the island as it has become much more difficult to use US dollars, in part due to the tightening of the economic blockade rules imposed by former President Donald Trump, and that Joe Biden has not reviewed at the moment.

Bitcoin is nothing new in Cuba

Digital currencies, whose value can skyrocket exponentially, and in a short time depreciate in the most abrupt way, are mostly independent of any central bank and use computer codes based on blockchain technology to function over the network and carry out payments. and transactions of the millions of users around the world who use them.

According to unofficial estimates, some 10,000 Cubans use Bitcoin on a regular basis, making it one of the most widely used cryptocurrencies in the country. Last August, the island's president, Miguel Díaz- Canel, assured that his government was analyzing the advisability of using cryptocurrencies in the country's economic operations, whose GDP plummeted 11% in 2020 due to the tightening of the US embargo. and the impact of the coronavirus pandemic.

The resolution issued by the Cuban authorities says that the country's Central Bank can authorize the use of cryptocurrencies "for reasons of socioeconomic interest", but clarifies that the state will be continuously supporting, monitoring and ensuring that the operations carried out with digital money are always controlled to avoid fraud and crimes such as money laundering. In this sense, the report also explicitly points out that operations with cryptocurrencies cannot involve illegal activities punishable by Cuban legislation.

Because cryptocurrencies can be used for long-distance transactions, which are supposedly anonymous, they are often used by people trying to evade government regulations.