Western Union, the last service available for Cubans living abroad to send money to their families, suspended U.S. dollar transfers to Cuba in November 2020 after sanctions by then-President Donald Trump’s administration.

Cubans may not have Visa or Mastercard, but they have PayWithMoon, which allows us to fund a prepaid virtual card with bitcoin (BTC). They can't use banks, but found in bitcoin a public peer-to-peer bank. They are not accepted by Stripe, the ubiquitous internet payment network, but can make transfers in seconds through Bitcoin’s Lightning Network.

Here is a prediction: I believe Cuba will experience a kind of hyperbitcoinization in the private sector, a phenomenon that has already been happening organically and simply through the acceptance of bitcoin in businesses, such as restaurants, cellphone repair stores and delivery merchants.

Businesses that receive crypto as a form of payment often save in crypto or pay for supplies to another business with crypto. Also, they buy things in the U.S. through platforms such as Bitrefill or PayWithMoon. They can also convert crypto to Cuban pesos to buy supplies within the country.

I estimate there are now more than 20,000 Cubans using crypto on a daily basis. As many as 200,000 people have owned a wallet or used crypto at some point. QvaPay and Bitremesas, two companies I created, have sent crypto to more than 150,000 wallets so far.

The good news is that bitcoin is not subject to these same laws or geographical restrictions; it doesn’t care about embargoes.