Cuba’s Government Aims To Recognize BTC For Payments

Cuba’s government aims to recognize BTC for payments after El Salvador made history by accepting BTC as a legal tender as we reported in our Bitcoin news previously.

The number of countries that plan to m mimics the movement of El Salvador is growing and a recent report showed that Cuba’s central bank is considering implementing rules to enable the nation to utilize digital assets legally. Miguel Diaz Canel, Cuba’s President announced he is working with other authorities in the country that reviewed new ways to adopt crypto and overcome the financial turbulence which enhanced uring the COVID 19 pandemic. Bloomberg cited the local official Gazette and informed that the nation is planning to step into the digital asset space.

The reports show that Cuba’s Government along with the Central Bank wants to recognize and regulate cryptos for payments. The banking authority will implement the rules and will determine how to license other providers of these services which can operate within the island. Cuba’s economy suffered for years and it took another hit when the previous US president’s administration implemented more sanctions and crippled the usage of the dollar and the recent estimation by the senior Cuban ministry officials Johana Tablada who noted that these measures cost the country around $20 billion.

“The damage to the bilateral relationship during this time has been considerable, and the economic harm to Cuba immense. We estimate it at about $20 billion.”

The decentralized nature of BTC and some other cryptos could provide a viable alternative for Cuba and the state wants to make sure that the asset operations are controlled to an extent to use them for the reasons of socio-economic interest but it is also worth noting that El Salvador was the first nation to start accepting it as a legal tender as it law came into effect in less than two weeks.

As recently reported, The money transfer services were a major player in Cuba’s economy but now, Bitcoin solutions could start taking over. Western Union disables all US-Cuba transfers because of the heavily imposed US sanctions. Cubans are therefore turning to Bitcoin. After this weekend, the remittance venues will be cut off and Americans will no longer be able to transfer money to Cuba with Western Union. The transfer service which dominates the remittance industry has a market cap of about $9 billion and said that they will be pulling services because of the US sanctions against Cuba’s communist government.