Cuba to Legalize Crypto

More African, South, and Central American countries are moving to adopt Bitcoin and crypto and in the Caribbean, it’s no different with nations such as Barbados, Bahamas, and Jamaica and now Cuba joining the fray. According to a Bloomberg report we read, Cuba’s communist government is trying to legalise and regulate the growing use of cryptocurrencies as citizens have been using crypto for transactions to work around state controls.

The Cuban Central bank has started drafting rules “for the legal use of such currencies in commercial transactions, and to issue licenses for providers of services connected with virtual assets. Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, and Tether are already the most commonly used digital currencies in Cuba, the bank reported.

This bottom-up adoption of cryptocurrency has been gaining momentum outside of what many would call the usual places. Just a few months ago El Salvador became the first country to adopt Bitcoin as legal tender, while Panama, Paraguay, and Brazil are in active conversations about the role of crypto in their governments.

In the Caribbean especially, it has long been clear that the Caribbean needs to modernise and speed up its armchair, largely conservative legacy banking and payments systems in ways that embrace the evolving needs of the unbanked and entrepreneurs, as well as works around the region’s fragmented geography.

This year has seen The Bahamas and the Eastern Caribbean introduce two such currencies. The first was the Bahamas SandDollar, a CBDC issued by the Bahamas Central Bank, which can be used for transactions on mobile phones.

Then the East Caribbean Currency Union, ECCU, has launched a digital EC dollar pilot project known as DCash. This involves Antigua, Grenada, St Kitts, and St Lucia developing a digital-payment platform backed by the Eastern Caribbean Central Bank, which, after a 12-month assessment, is expected to roll out the initiative in all eight ECCU nations.

Other Caribbean countries are also exploring the use of digital CBDCs. They include Belize; Haiti which intends to develop a pilot programme; and Barbados, which has been using since 2017 a ‘synthetic’ CBDC issued by a third party, backed 101 percent by notes and coins, supervised by the Central Bank, and the country’s Financial Services Commission.

This shake-up in how money flows globally and in the world of Caribbean FIntech, showcases again, one of the top trends reshaping the face and culture of Caribbean Business. Financial Technologies are indeed redistributing Caribbean Wealth.