Is crypto legal in Cuba? Rules & regulation (2026)

The Banco Central de Cuba named 10 private companies (mostly tech/digital sector, including IngeniusTecnologías and Dofleini) as the first to be permitted to use virtual assets exclusively for cross-border payments tied to their corporate purpose, with mandatory quarterly reporting to the BCC and one-year renewable authorizations revocable on non-compliance. This is the most expansive sanctioned private-sector use of crypto to date under the existing licensing regime.

Cuba's final 4th-round FATF follow-up upgraded Recommendation 15 (virtual assets and VASPs) from Partially Compliant to Largely Compliant, recognising improvements to the domestic licensing and AML/CFT framework built since Resolution 215/2021. Cuba then transitioned to preparing for the 5th Round of Mutual Evaluations.

Expanding Resolution 215/2021 in 21 detailed sections, Resolution 89/2022 established the complete operating rules for virtual asset service providers: a 90-business-day approval window, mandatory AML/KYC obligations, five-year record-keeping, Cuban financial accounting standards, and a probity check by the BCC's General Directorate of Financial Operations Investigation. Licences run one year, renewable for a second, reflecting the sector's still-experimental status.

Cuba's GAFILAT 4th-round follow-up found the country compliant with 19 of 40 FATF Recommendations and largely compliant with 19 more, leaving only two rated partially compliant — a major improvement that validated the legislative and regulatory activity driven by Resolutions 215/2021 and 89/2022.

Twenty days after its publication in the Gaceta Oficial, Cuba's first crypto-specific regulation became operative, formally opening the BCC licensing window for virtual asset service providers and subjecting all commercial use of virtual assets to central-bank oversight.

Published in Gaceta Oficial No. 73 Extraordinaria, Resolution 215/2021 is the foundational law of Cuba's crypto framework: it officially defines virtual assets as a legal payment and investment instrument, designates the BCC as the sole VASP licensing authority, and makes individuals who transact outside the licensed system bear full civil and criminal liability — while not prohibiting peer-to-peer transactions. The regulation cites US-sanctions-driven financial exclusion and FATF compliance as its twin rationales.

The Trump administration sanctioned Fincimex — the Cuban military-linked remittance processor — forcing Western Union to close its 407 Cuban locations on 23 November 2020. This severed the dominant formal channel for Cuban-American remittances (roughly 50 % of the $6 bn annual flow), dramatically accelerating grassroots Bitcoin and crypto adoption as the only practical alternative and creating the political urgency behind the 2021 regulation.

As successive Trump-era measures closed Cuba's access to US banking and money-transfer infrastructure, Cubans abroad began routing remittances via peer-to-peer Bitcoin exchanges (notably BitRemesas), normalising crypto as an economic survival tool and building the political momentum that led to formal regulation in 2021.

Cuba's regional FATF body (GAFILAT) completed its 4th-round mutual evaluation, setting the compliance baseline — including an initial (low) rating on Recommendation 15 (virtual assets) — against which the 2022 and 2024 follow-up reports measured subsequent progress, and providing the international AML/CFT framework that Cuba's 2021–2022 crypto regulations were explicitly designed to satisfy.