8 ms·

Cuba’s Bitcoin Revolution

lefrenchy 5y ago
I think removing embargos would help more than a volatile cryptocurrency.
- mindcandy 5y ago
  Yes. But, which of those two options is actually happening?
  - lefrenchy 5y ago
    Touché
    - arcticbull 5y ago
      A volatile currency with direct transaction fees ranging from $0.05-60 [edited per FreeRadical - thanks!] and indirect transaction fees of roughly $90 (socialized block reward). Whose value dropped 50% in a month then went up 50% in a month (which of course still leaves it 25% below its near-term highs). I don't think even the Cuban Peso performs like that. Think about both of those in terms of the average salary of a Cuban national. How about the minimum wage? $0.44 per hour. [edit, and while I'm in here] And why did it drop 50% in a month? Because the worlds 25th largest automaker decided it was a bad medium of exchange for buying electric cars. Perhaps unsurprisingly in Venezuela, they decided to go the other way, dollarizing. They moved 66% of all transactions to the USD, forcing the Maduro government's hand, and leading to their major banks offering USD deposit accounts. [1] If anything they need USDC not BTC. This is just gambling in a regulatory and legal void. The Mad Max of finance. [1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-01-13/venezuela-plans-to-expand-use-of-foreign-currency-bank-accounts https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-01-13/venezuela...
      - FreeRadical 5y ago
        Direct transaction fees have been $0.05-0.2 for a long while now, mostly being below $0.1 See: https://mempool.space/ https://mempool.space/
        deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
      - tenuousemphasis 5y ago
        Indirect transaction fees are a really pointless statistic.
        deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
      - wesleywt 5y ago
        Bitcoin was a saviour for many ordingary folk in Venezuela during the hyperinflation crisis. It worked as intended. https://www.dw.com/en/venezuelans-try-to-beat-hyperinflation-with-cryptocurrency-revolution/a-57219083 https://www.dw.com/en/venezuelans-try-to-beat-hyperinflation... Why would a country embargoed by the USA use USD?
        arcticbull 5y ago
        Your link doesn't mean much, as after all 66% of all transactions in Venezuela are USD denominated now per my link. The people of Venezuela had the choice: BTC or USD. They spoke, and they said USD. Likely only the wealthy laundering money, probably connected to the Maduro government are playing BTC. Only certain entities and individuals connected to the Maduro government are under sanctions, not everyone in Venezuela - which is why USD remittances are possible in the first place. Folks are using USD because Bitcoin is wildly inappropriate for use as a currency. [edit] Consider that at the time that article was written the average BTC transaction fee with multiple months minimum wage for the average Venezeulan.
        notahacker 5y ago
  - IfOnlyYouKnew 5y ago
    Neither…
- hypnotist 5y ago
  I will just leave this here: https://twitter.com/antoniogm/status/1415489923927343105 https://twitter.com/antoniogm/status/1415489923927343105
  - puchatek 5y ago
    Good to know, thanks.
  - lefrenchy 5y ago
    Not sure how some random person on twitter saying "if you think the embargo is bad you don't understand Cuban reality" as a side note is supposed to nullify years of history? The embargo is absolutely part of the context, you can't just wave away an economic boot on Cuba's neck?
    - hypnotist 5y ago
      well, he is actually Cuban who lives in US and follows the situation. I am willing to believe his take much more than random dudes from CA. Here's some of his writings on Cuba. https://www.thepullrequest.com/p/the-cuban-tank-man-will-be-an-influencer https://www.thepullrequest.com/p/the-cuban-tank-man-will-be-...
      - lefrenchy 5y ago
        Look the reality is it doesn’t matter what any of us think about the situation on the ground in Cuba. We do not live in Cuba and therefore cannot understand their lived experiences (neither does a Cuban living in Miami who likely has an ideologically warped perception just as much as any of us). The only thing we as Americans can control is to end an economically devastating embargo. At least then American foreign policy can be completely extracted from any of these questions. It objectively has economic consequences on Cuba, and for this person to just hand wave that away makes me question their integrity.
- Mengkudulangsat 5y ago
  That embargo is always such a mystery to me. Why on earth is it still in place in 2021? Is it because no US politician want to submit a motion for it to be repealed? Or is there a powerful anti-Cuba lobby keeping it there? So much misery can be lifted with little effort by so few, yet here we are.
  - pjc50 5y ago
    > is there a powerful anti-Cuba lobby keeping it there? Yes. Basically few Americans care either way about Cuba, except for the descendants of those who fled the revolution, who are absolutely furious about it. That has a big effect in Florida.
  - input_sh 5y ago
    Two months ago the UN voted on ending the embargo on Cuba (though they've been doing that since 1992). 184 countries voted to end the embargo, 3 abstained from voting, and only two countries voted against: US and Israel. https://news.un.org/en/story/2021/06/1094612 https://news.un.org/en/story/2021/06/1094612
  - enaaem 5y ago
    Cuba can still trade with the rest of the world like the EU, Russia, China and Canada.
    - Mengkudulangsat 5y ago
      Well of course, but that's not a good reason to prevent them from trading with the US.
    - SideburnsOfDoom 5y ago
      The "gravity model of trade" is still approximately true which TL;DR states that it is easiest to trade the most with your largest neighbours. For Cuba, that means Florida (and after that, Mexico and Central American countries). Yes Cuba _can_ trade with more distant partners, but it is less preferable. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravity_model_of_trade https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravity_model_of_trade https://www.economicsonline.co.uk/Global_economics/Gravity_theory_of_trade.html https://www.economicsonline.co.uk/Global_economics/Gravity_t...
themodelplumber 5y ago
Went diving for the lede and gave up somewhere near the wreck of the titanic. Maybe I scrolled right past but wow that was a lot of extra context.
- jnsaff2 5y ago
  The bitcoin part of the piece is based on interviews with 3 people: 1. supposedly buys bitcoin with the funny money the article complains about, leaves unclear where her disposable income comes from and also how people get bitcoin and why they want funny money if they have bitcoin 2. estimates there are hundreds of thousands of bitcoin users in cuba, people get bitcoin sent by family abroad, businesses which want to interface with foreign companies need to use bitcoin 3. this guy uses bitcoin as an uber eats, food delivered to him and other small conveniences, admits it's very early for bitcoin
  - pjc50 5y ago
    > this guy uses bitcoin as an uber eats This is the famous 10k BTC pizza again, isn't it?
weatherlight 5y ago
Ahh yes. socialism bad, unfettered capitalism good. Maybe we (The US) should just lift the embargo?
- puchatek 5y ago
  Pls see Twitter link further up
- trident5000 5y ago
  Correct, socialism bad. And where in the world is there unfettered capitalism? In the US we have the government which sets rules and regulations.
whoaisme 5y ago
Cubans complain that all economic surplus is confiscated by the state. So then how is opening trade w Cuba going to help in the long run when all it will do is give a bunch of cash to prop up the regime? We have to stop trading with totalitarian governments including China and Russia, not allow more of them access to US markets.
dougSF70 5y ago
Bitcoin could be the undoing of the regime. It will allow Cubans to accumulate wealth that the regime cannot seize or convert into another worthless Cuban domestic currency. While I like the idea of free health care and education, the idea that a brain surgeon gets paid same as a street cleaner is absurd. Cuba is a series of failed experiments.
- arcticbull 5y ago
  > While I like the idea of free health care and education, the idea that a brain surgeon gets paid same as a street cleaner is absurd. I personally support wealth and income inequality when coupled with social mobility (and a high standard of living at the low end). With that in mind, why do you think it's absurd for both a street cleaner and a brain surgeon to enjoy a middle class lifestyle? I think we both agree neither should be dirt poor, but of course, that's not the only option. I cannot, for one, think of a solid justification. Both do something important, necessary even, and both benefit society at large. This comes up frequently here when folks balk at Canadian software engineering wages, which are by Canadian standards solid middle class wages. Compared to America it can be a "pittance" but of course, Canada has much lower wealth and income inequality - and it's because there's a much tighter band of compensation. Fun stuff to think about.
  - moonchrome 5y ago
    > I cannot, for one, think of a solid justification. Really ? Any person without a severe physical disabilities can be a street cleaner - you need very low incentives to generate people capable. Surgeons take like a decade of training and a small % of the population is even capable of becoming one and there's a demand for their skills. Software developers create output that potentially has a very non-linear return. Few 1000 people can create software used by billions daily. A few people can develop software that manages billions of $ of assets.
    - pineaux 5y ago
      actually, statistics prove you wrong. Cuba pays surgeons roughly the same as streetcleaners but they have twice the amount of specualists per 100.000, compared to the united states (1). If you look at countries that have (almost) free education (like cuba), you see that these countries have similar numbers of physicians/specialists per 100.000 people. These facts tend to show that the main factor for having "enough" surgeons has nothing or little to do with pay and mostly with opportunity (free) and capability. As an interesting sidenote, I'd like to point out that the high salaries of surgeons in the US help to prevent people from going into surgery. Another point is that if you go into surgery for the money, I think you have the wrong incentives to be the best surgeon. (1) https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SH.MED.SAOP.P5?view=map&year=2014 https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SH.MED.SAOP.P5?view=map...
tonyjstark 5y ago
There's everything in there: being your own bank, trust and distancing from pyramid schemes, hodling, ... How often does Bitcoin need to fail as a currency so that crypto-currency enthusiasts stop pushing the narrative of Bitcoin being a currency? But maybe if Cuba becomes anarcho-capitalistic, the stupid embargo gets finally lifted /s.
- namaria 5y ago
  I find it amusing that much like Marxism, bitcoin promised a revolution under capitalism's nose, only to thrive in dragging dramatically underdeveloped societies into it.
Acrobatic_Road 5y ago
The woman mentioned in the article mentions she first heard about bitcoin watching keiser report on RT. Out of curiosity, I did a youtube search for keiser report, and sorted by most views, and the top results are all spanish dubbed episodes about bitcoin. So it looks like Max Keiser has a major audience in spanish speaking countries, even though his show is really for western audiences.
- guerrilla 5y ago
  Could it be due to TeleSUR? I know there is some overlap between them and RT.
- aixi 5y ago
  Spanish speaking countries are western audiences.
quickthrower2 5y ago
Bitcoin doesn’t scale as they will soon find out! $10 fee on every transaction and an immutable 7tps. LN is joke.
- 0xtr 5y ago
  Classic shitpost comment, saying something is bad/joke and not a single explanation as to why you think it's a joke. Great job :)
  - quickthrower2 5y ago
    Setting up an LN node is on par with setting up a mining rig in terms of fiddlyness and tech know how
legulere 5y ago
This shows one of the few uses of Bitcoin: evading the law (in this case the US-embargo)
tdeck 5y ago
> In tragic irony, unskilled workers were often far better off financially than highly-educated ones, and many of the latter dropped out of their careers to clean tables or pick people up from the airport to get access to the CUC economy. The dual currency system institutionalized inequality, creating clear classes of haves and have nots. For many people like Lucia, this as much as anything else showed that the revolution was a sham. The second part of this paragraph feels like a really weird framing of the first part. As far as I can tell: - workers in what the author considers less-skilled jobs are making more than those in higher skilled jobs - some workers are quitting to take up these "unskilled" jobs, and it appears they're fully able to do so On the one hand, it seems the incentives aren't great for people to work in certain professions. On the other, it's kind of hard to argue that there's a fundamental class struggle going on here when a doctor can join the "privileged" class by simply quitting their job and wiping tables. Clearly there's more going on here than somebody is letting on. It would make more sense for people affiliated with the government to have a privileged position (perhaps by being able to access foreign currency more directly).
- choeger 5y ago
  It slowly bleeds the countrie's economy dry. I witnessed the problem first hand when visiting Cuba: Rented a car and a driver for a private tour of Havanna and the driver was absolutely fluent in English. Like, better then me, close to native speaker, with only a slight accent. So I was complimenting him and asked, where he learned it. I was expecting something like really good language courses, because the typical Cuban would not be able to visit English-speaking countries. Turns out, the guy was a former high-level manager in the state-owned tourist company and basically responsible for marketing/sales in Europe. He decided to drive a car when he learned that the lady cleaning his office actually earned more than him. Obviously he became a great guide, to my benefit, but imagine the loss for the Cuban economy as a whole. Edit: One more point: In Cuba you would typically tip with 1CUC, even for the most trivial of services. Someone pulls a chair onto the beach for you? One CUC. Cleaning of Hotel room? One CUC. Drinks brought by waiter? One CUC. And so on. The average monthly income is equivalent to about 30CUC. Assume you'd live as a programmer in the Bay Area, making some $120k and people start tipping $4k for pretty much everything. How long would you stay a developer?
altacc 5y ago
Headline is hyperbolic as the article itself states crypto usage in Cuba is on par with other countries, about 2.5%. There may be some variance in use cases and good future potential in Cuba but it's certainly not yet an active "revolution". There are certainly good use cases (and existing solutions) across the world for alternative banking systems, especially for international remittances. The problem with positing Bitcoin as the solution is something that this article highlights as the problem with the Cuba's currencies - both Bitcoin and Cuba fiat are incredibly unstable. People living on tight margins in poor economies cannot afford to gamble with their daily cashflow. Every currency fluctuation has a direct effect on their daily living standards, including what they will be able to afford to eat. In the past few months we've seen massive drops in the value of Bitcoin, such as 25% over 10 days and 40% over 14 days. These are the kind of currency devaluations that poor people on very low incomes cannot afford. The article would have been better if it had talked about cryptocurrency in general, not specifically the one used for financial speculation by millionaires (speculation in which Bitcoin Magazine plays a part in and it's founders & CEO financially benefit from). Centralized financial networks and stable coins (if we insist on using a blockchain) are more likely to be the answer for these use cases any maybe the hype around Bitcoin helps that but as-is, it's not a good solution for those who would actually benefit from alternative financial networks.
- Clewza313 5y ago
  I think even 2.5% sounds incredibly optimistic. Cuba's internet system is famously dysfunctional, for a long time the only form of access was to stand around a few overloaded public wifi points. Mobile data is available now, but prohibitively priced unless you're one of the moneyed elite.
- mat0 5y ago
  The piece comes from a site called "Bitcoin Magazine" lol. Of course they have an interest in seeing these "revolutions" all over the globe
tomcooks 5y ago
Abandoned a paragraph in due to an Unllunavoidable ad covering half the screen
hortense 5y ago
> The official Cuban annual median salary in 2018 was approximately 9,300 pesos, or around $372. To put this into perspective, a single bitcoin transaction currently costs $2.3.
- fabianfabian 5y ago
  It's $0.30 on the base layer and closer to $0.01 if you use lightning.
thirdvect0r 5y ago
The Maleconazo riots were less than 1000 people. Hardly earth-shattering in a country of 11 million. But unsurprisingly the US touts it as some kind of populist uprising when this sort of thing has been happening in Portland for 18 months.
phreeza 5y ago
I remember reading stories about the great cuban sneakernet where people got all kinds of tv shows, etc, with quite low latency, all without internet access through USB sticks. I wonder if there is a way to run something similar to a cryptocurrency on such a "network".
popileviz 5y ago
Some of the worst bullshit I've read on Cuba in recent months. And there's been a lot of that to choose from
hui-zheng 5y ago
> the communist government toyed with capitalism “the way a tiger plays with its prey: tapping it lightly one minute, squeezing the life out of it the next. Socialist officials urged would-be Cuban capitalists to go ahead and open their small businesses, then they erected layers of burdensome regulations to limit profit and handicap success. Their real goal was not to lift millions out of poverty. It was to prevent anyone from making millions.” It's the same thing now happening in China. Unfortunately, this mentality and ideology now also finds its home in North America.

I think removing embargos would help more than a volatile cryptocurrency.

mindcandy 5y ago
Yes. But, which of those two options is actually happening?
- lefrenchy 5y ago
  Touché
  - arcticbull 5y ago
    A volatile currency with direct transaction fees ranging from $0.05-60 [edited per FreeRadical - thanks!] and indirect transaction fees of roughly $90 (socialized block reward). Whose value dropped 50% in a month then went up 50% in a month (which of course still leaves it 25% below its near-term highs). I don't think even the Cuban Peso performs like that. Think about both of those in terms of the average salary of a Cuban national. How about the minimum wage? $0.44 per hour. [edit, and while I'm in here] And why did it drop 50% in a month? Because the worlds 25th largest automaker decided it was a bad medium of exchange for buying electric cars. Perhaps unsurprisingly in Venezuela, they decided to go the other way, dollarizing. They moved 66% of all transactions to the USD, forcing the Maduro government's hand, and leading to their major banks offering USD deposit accounts. [1] If anything they need USDC not BTC. This is just gambling in a regulatory and legal void. The Mad Max of finance. [1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-01-13/venezuela-plans-to-expand-use-of-foreign-currency-bank-accounts https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-01-13/venezuela...
    - FreeRadical 5y ago
      Direct transaction fees have been $0.05-0.2 for a long while now, mostly being below $0.1 See: https://mempool.space/ https://mempool.space/
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
    - tenuousemphasis 5y ago
      Indirect transaction fees are a really pointless statistic.
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
    - wesleywt 5y ago
      Bitcoin was a saviour for many ordingary folk in Venezuela during the hyperinflation crisis. It worked as intended. https://www.dw.com/en/venezuelans-try-to-beat-hyperinflation-with-cryptocurrency-revolution/a-57219083 https://www.dw.com/en/venezuelans-try-to-beat-hyperinflation... Why would a country embargoed by the USA use USD?
      - arcticbull 5y ago
        Your link doesn't mean much, as after all 66% of all transactions in Venezuela are USD denominated now per my link. The people of Venezuela had the choice: BTC or USD. They spoke, and they said USD. Likely only the wealthy laundering money, probably connected to the Maduro government are playing BTC. Only certain entities and individuals connected to the Maduro government are under sanctions, not everyone in Venezuela - which is why USD remittances are possible in the first place. Folks are using USD because Bitcoin is wildly inappropriate for use as a currency. [edit] Consider that at the time that article was written the average BTC transaction fee with multiple months minimum wage for the average Venezeulan.
      - notahacker 5y ago
- IfOnlyYouKnew 5y ago
  Neither…
hypnotist 5y ago
I will just leave this here: https://twitter.com/antoniogm/status/1415489923927343105 https://twitter.com/antoniogm/status/1415489923927343105
- puchatek 5y ago
  Good to know, thanks.
- lefrenchy 5y ago
  Not sure how some random person on twitter saying "if you think the embargo is bad you don't understand Cuban reality" as a side note is supposed to nullify years of history? The embargo is absolutely part of the context, you can't just wave away an economic boot on Cuba's neck?
  - hypnotist 5y ago
    well, he is actually Cuban who lives in US and follows the situation. I am willing to believe his take much more than random dudes from CA. Here's some of his writings on Cuba. https://www.thepullrequest.com/p/the-cuban-tank-man-will-be-an-influencer https://www.thepullrequest.com/p/the-cuban-tank-man-will-be-...
    - lefrenchy 5y ago
      Look the reality is it doesn’t matter what any of us think about the situation on the ground in Cuba. We do not live in Cuba and therefore cannot understand their lived experiences (neither does a Cuban living in Miami who likely has an ideologically warped perception just as much as any of us). The only thing we as Americans can control is to end an economically devastating embargo. At least then American foreign policy can be completely extracted from any of these questions. It objectively has economic consequences on Cuba, and for this person to just hand wave that away makes me question their integrity.
Mengkudulangsat 5y ago
That embargo is always such a mystery to me. Why on earth is it still in place in 2021? Is it because no US politician want to submit a motion for it to be repealed? Or is there a powerful anti-Cuba lobby keeping it there? So much misery can be lifted with little effort by so few, yet here we are.
- pjc50 5y ago
  > is there a powerful anti-Cuba lobby keeping it there? Yes. Basically few Americans care either way about Cuba, except for the descendants of those who fled the revolution, who are absolutely furious about it. That has a big effect in Florida.
- input_sh 5y ago
  Two months ago the UN voted on ending the embargo on Cuba (though they've been doing that since 1992). 184 countries voted to end the embargo, 3 abstained from voting, and only two countries voted against: US and Israel. https://news.un.org/en/story/2021/06/1094612 https://news.un.org/en/story/2021/06/1094612
- enaaem 5y ago
  Cuba can still trade with the rest of the world like the EU, Russia, China and Canada.
  - Mengkudulangsat 5y ago
    Well of course, but that's not a good reason to prevent them from trading with the US.
  - SideburnsOfDoom 5y ago
    The "gravity model of trade" is still approximately true which TL;DR states that it is easiest to trade the most with your largest neighbours. For Cuba, that means Florida (and after that, Mexico and Central American countries). Yes Cuba _can_ trade with more distant partners, but it is less preferable. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravity_model_of_trade https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravity_model_of_trade https://www.economicsonline.co.uk/Global_economics/Gravity_theory_of_trade.html https://www.economicsonline.co.uk/Global_economics/Gravity_t...

Went diving for the lede and gave up somewhere near the wreck of the titanic. Maybe I scrolled right past but wow that was a lot of extra context.

jnsaff2 5y ago
The bitcoin part of the piece is based on interviews with 3 people: 1. supposedly buys bitcoin with the funny money the article complains about, leaves unclear where her disposable income comes from and also how people get bitcoin and why they want funny money if they have bitcoin 2. estimates there are hundreds of thousands of bitcoin users in cuba, people get bitcoin sent by family abroad, businesses which want to interface with foreign companies need to use bitcoin 3. this guy uses bitcoin as an uber eats, food delivered to him and other small conveniences, admits it's very early for bitcoin
- pjc50 5y ago
  > this guy uses bitcoin as an uber eats This is the famous 10k BTC pizza again, isn't it?

weatherlight 5y ago

Ahh yes. socialism bad, unfettered capitalism good. Maybe we (The US) should just lift the embargo?

puchatek 5y ago
Pls see Twitter link further up
trident5000 5y ago
Correct, socialism bad. And where in the world is there unfettered capitalism? In the US we have the government which sets rules and regulations.

whoaisme 5y ago

Cubans complain that all economic surplus is confiscated by the state. So then how is opening trade w Cuba going to help in the long run when all it will do is give a bunch of cash to prop up the regime? We have to stop trading with totalitarian governments including China and Russia, not allow more of them access to US markets.

dougSF70 5y ago

Bitcoin could be the undoing of the regime. It will allow Cubans to accumulate wealth that the regime cannot seize or convert into another worthless Cuban domestic currency. While I like the idea of free health care and education, the idea that a brain surgeon gets paid same as a street cleaner is absurd. Cuba is a series of failed experiments.

arcticbull 5y ago
> While I like the idea of free health care and education, the idea that a brain surgeon gets paid same as a street cleaner is absurd. I personally support wealth and income inequality when coupled with social mobility (and a high standard of living at the low end). With that in mind, why do you think it's absurd for both a street cleaner and a brain surgeon to enjoy a middle class lifestyle? I think we both agree neither should be dirt poor, but of course, that's not the only option. I cannot, for one, think of a solid justification. Both do something important, necessary even, and both benefit society at large. This comes up frequently here when folks balk at Canadian software engineering wages, which are by Canadian standards solid middle class wages. Compared to America it can be a "pittance" but of course, Canada has much lower wealth and income inequality - and it's because there's a much tighter band of compensation. Fun stuff to think about.
- moonchrome 5y ago
  > I cannot, for one, think of a solid justification. Really ? Any person without a severe physical disabilities can be a street cleaner - you need very low incentives to generate people capable. Surgeons take like a decade of training and a small % of the population is even capable of becoming one and there's a demand for their skills. Software developers create output that potentially has a very non-linear return. Few 1000 people can create software used by billions daily. A few people can develop software that manages billions of $ of assets.
  - pineaux 5y ago
    actually, statistics prove you wrong. Cuba pays surgeons roughly the same as streetcleaners but they have twice the amount of specualists per 100.000, compared to the united states (1). If you look at countries that have (almost) free education (like cuba), you see that these countries have similar numbers of physicians/specialists per 100.000 people. These facts tend to show that the main factor for having "enough" surgeons has nothing or little to do with pay and mostly with opportunity (free) and capability. As an interesting sidenote, I'd like to point out that the high salaries of surgeons in the US help to prevent people from going into surgery. Another point is that if you go into surgery for the money, I think you have the wrong incentives to be the best surgeon. (1) https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SH.MED.SAOP.P5?view=map&year=2014 https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SH.MED.SAOP.P5?view=map...

tonyjstark 5y ago

There's everything in there: being your own bank, trust and distancing from pyramid schemes, hodling, ... How often does Bitcoin need to fail as a currency so that crypto-currency enthusiasts stop pushing the narrative of Bitcoin being a currency? But maybe if Cuba becomes anarcho-capitalistic, the stupid embargo gets finally lifted /s.

namaria 5y ago
I find it amusing that much like Marxism, bitcoin promised a revolution under capitalism's nose, only to thrive in dragging dramatically underdeveloped societies into it.

Acrobatic_Road 5y ago

The woman mentioned in the article mentions she first heard about bitcoin watching keiser report on RT. Out of curiosity, I did a youtube search for keiser report, and sorted by most views, and the top results are all spanish dubbed episodes about bitcoin. So it looks like Max Keiser has a major audience in spanish speaking countries, even though his show is really for western audiences.

guerrilla 5y ago
Could it be due to TeleSUR? I know there is some overlap between them and RT.
aixi 5y ago
Spanish speaking countries are western audiences.

quickthrower2 5y ago

Bitcoin doesn’t scale as they will soon find out! $10 fee on every transaction and an immutable 7tps. LN is joke.

0xtr 5y ago
Classic shitpost comment, saying something is bad/joke and not a single explanation as to why you think it's a joke. Great job :)
- quickthrower2 5y ago
  Setting up an LN node is on par with setting up a mining rig in terms of fiddlyness and tech know how

legulere 5y ago

This shows one of the few uses of Bitcoin: evading the law (in this case the US-embargo)

tdeck 5y ago

> In tragic irony, unskilled workers were often far better off financially than highly-educated ones, and many of the latter dropped out of their careers to clean tables or pick people up from the airport to get access to the CUC economy. The dual currency system institutionalized inequality, creating clear classes of haves and have nots. For many people like Lucia, this as much as anything else showed that the revolution was a sham. The second part of this paragraph feels like a really weird framing of the first part. As far as I can tell: - workers in what the author considers less-skilled jobs are making more than those in higher skilled jobs - some workers are quitting to take up these "unskilled" jobs, and it appears they're fully able to do so On the one hand, it seems the incentives aren't great for people to work in certain professions. On the other, it's kind of hard to argue that there's a fundamental class struggle going on here when a doctor can join the "privileged" class by simply quitting their job and wiping tables. Clearly there's more going on here than somebody is letting on. It would make more sense for people affiliated with the government to have a privileged position (perhaps by being able to access foreign currency more directly).

choeger 5y ago
It slowly bleeds the countrie's economy dry. I witnessed the problem first hand when visiting Cuba: Rented a car and a driver for a private tour of Havanna and the driver was absolutely fluent in English. Like, better then me, close to native speaker, with only a slight accent. So I was complimenting him and asked, where he learned it. I was expecting something like really good language courses, because the typical Cuban would not be able to visit English-speaking countries. Turns out, the guy was a former high-level manager in the state-owned tourist company and basically responsible for marketing/sales in Europe. He decided to drive a car when he learned that the lady cleaning his office actually earned more than him. Obviously he became a great guide, to my benefit, but imagine the loss for the Cuban economy as a whole. Edit: One more point: In Cuba you would typically tip with 1CUC, even for the most trivial of services. Someone pulls a chair onto the beach for you? One CUC. Cleaning of Hotel room? One CUC. Drinks brought by waiter? One CUC. And so on. The average monthly income is equivalent to about 30CUC. Assume you'd live as a programmer in the Bay Area, making some $120k and people start tipping $4k for pretty much everything. How long would you stay a developer?

altacc 5y ago

Headline is hyperbolic as the article itself states crypto usage in Cuba is on par with other countries, about 2.5%. There may be some variance in use cases and good future potential in Cuba but it's certainly not yet an active "revolution". There are certainly good use cases (and existing solutions) across the world for alternative banking systems, especially for international remittances. The problem with positing Bitcoin as the solution is something that this article highlights as the problem with the Cuba's currencies - both Bitcoin and Cuba fiat are incredibly unstable. People living on tight margins in poor economies cannot afford to gamble with their daily cashflow. Every currency fluctuation has a direct effect on their daily living standards, including what they will be able to afford to eat. In the past few months we've seen massive drops in the value of Bitcoin, such as 25% over 10 days and 40% over 14 days. These are the kind of currency devaluations that poor people on very low incomes cannot afford. The article would have been better if it had talked about cryptocurrency in general, not specifically the one used for financial speculation by millionaires (speculation in which Bitcoin Magazine plays a part in and it's founders & CEO financially benefit from). Centralized financial networks and stable coins (if we insist on using a blockchain) are more likely to be the answer for these use cases any maybe the hype around Bitcoin helps that but as-is, it's not a good solution for those who would actually benefit from alternative financial networks.

Clewza313 5y ago
I think even 2.5% sounds incredibly optimistic. Cuba's internet system is famously dysfunctional, for a long time the only form of access was to stand around a few overloaded public wifi points. Mobile data is available now, but prohibitively priced unless you're one of the moneyed elite.
mat0 5y ago
The piece comes from a site called "Bitcoin Magazine" lol. Of course they have an interest in seeing these "revolutions" all over the globe

tomcooks 5y ago

Abandoned a paragraph in due to an Unllunavoidable ad covering half the screen

hortense 5y ago

> The official Cuban annual median salary in 2018 was approximately 9,300 pesos, or around $372. To put this into perspective, a single bitcoin transaction currently costs $2.3.

fabianfabian 5y ago
It's $0.30 on the base layer and closer to $0.01 if you use lightning.

thirdvect0r 5y ago

The Maleconazo riots were less than 1000 people. Hardly earth-shattering in a country of 11 million. But unsurprisingly the US touts it as some kind of populist uprising when this sort of thing has been happening in Portland for 18 months.

phreeza 5y ago

I remember reading stories about the great cuban sneakernet where people got all kinds of tv shows, etc, with quite low latency, all without internet access through USB sticks. I wonder if there is a way to run something similar to a cryptocurrency on such a "network".

popileviz 5y ago

Some of the worst bullshit I've read on Cuba in recent months. And there's been a lot of that to choose from

hui-zheng 5y ago

> the communist government toyed with capitalism “the way a tiger plays with its prey: tapping it lightly one minute, squeezing the life out of it the next. Socialist officials urged would-be Cuban capitalists to go ahead and open their small businesses, then they erected layers of burdensome regulations to limit profit and handicap success. Their real goal was not to lift millions out of poverty. It was to prevent anyone from making millions.” It's the same thing now happening in China. Unfortunately, this mentality and ideology now also finds its home in North America.