The Government of Cuba is studying the potential of crypto as part of a series of measures to deal with the economic crisis.
This was reported by Reuters with an article by Sarah Marsh and Marc Frank that came directly from Havana. In fact, partly because of the US sanctions, Cuba is suffering from an increasingly deep economic crisis and the communist government is studying a series of measures to revie its economy, including cryptocurrencies.
Cryptocurrencies, in fact, would be under consideration to carry out anonymous operations, allowing to circumvent the controls on the capital, somewhat similar to the attempt of Venezuela to create a state cryptocurrency, the Petro, which, however, has not been particularly successful to date.
Moreover, the connections with Venezuela are deeper than one might think because one of the causes of the Cuban economic crisis is precisely the sharp decrease in aid from the South American country.
The new measures were announced by President Miguel Diaz-Canel and his government and the aim is to increase the income of about a quarter of the population and include market reforms in one of the world’s last socialist economies.
This attempt would increase production and domestic market demand, as US sanctions are targeted at tourism and foreign investment, thereby stimulating growth.
In this regard, the Minister of Economy Alejandro Gil Fernandez said:
“We are studying the potential use of cryptocurrency … in our national and international commercial transactions, and we are working on that together with academics”.
Therefore, while some measures have already been announced and are expected to be launched soon, cryptocurrencies are only one of the hypotheses under consideration for future measures.
The Minister also reported that the government is working on a series of measures to increase decentralisation, as the Cuban government system is still extremely centralised, in order to improve the performance of state-owned companies and stimulate local production, with the aim of reducing imports and increasing exports.
