In 2021, Bitcoin went mainstream. Wall Street set its eyes on the world of crypto, with hotshot investors like hedge funder Paul Tudor Jones leading the pack; The Economist went from calling the cryptocurrency “useless” in 2018 to arguing that it belongs in most portfolios; tech CEOs Jack Dorsey and Elon Musk gamely crossed swords about Bitcoin’s merits at a conference run by an asset management firm. Popular opinion lags a bit: Many people still believe cryptocurrency is a giant, global get-rich-quick scheme. Others simply dismiss the entire thing as a speculation-driven fad in the best case, a criminal enterprise in the worst. But amid the noise, the enthusiasm, and the hype, we might be losing the most important story: the way cryptocurrency is changing lives in the developing world.

Take for example, Cuba, a country where internet penetration went from less than 40 percent in 2015 to an estimated 70 to 80 percent today. Like most people, Cubans want to buy things and sell things online—but, unlike most people, they cannot buy anything online using a debit or credit card. Due to US sanctions, ordinary Cubans find themselves cut off from the global financial system: They cannot start a Spotify subscription, buy a domain name, or pay for a website-hosting service using a card. This means that if Cubans wish to partake in online commerce, particularly with another country, they have to use cryptocurrencies. And where there’s a need, there’s a way. Cubans have found solutions such as Bitrefill, a site that sells gift cards from Spotify and other companies for cryptocurrency. Data from Bitrefill for June 2021 shows that four times as many people buy Cuban digital products (such as Cubacel phone top-ups) using cryptocurrencies as buy similar US products, on a population-adjusted basis. Crypto has deeply penetrated the country to the extent that Cuba’s Communist Party, a conservative Marxist institution not known for its technological savviness, has instructed the Central Bank of Cuba to regulate the use of cryptocurrencies and to study how they can be used to help the government avoid US sanctions. Paradoxically, officials in the US State Department are rumored to be looking into how cryptocurrencies can be used to set up remittance networks that bypass the hefty taxes extracted by the Cuban government.

While crypto adoption in Cuba has been a bottom-up phenomenon, in El Salvador Bitcoin has been proclaimed legal tender by the country’s controversial president, Nayib Bukele. President Bukele claims that the government-sponsored Bitcoin wallet already has more users than the entire Salvadoran banking system, potentially throwing a lifeline to thousands of unbanked individuals. These Bitcoin wallets operate partly on the Lightning network, a system that allows …….

Source: https://www.wired.com/story/crypto-remittances-cuba/