Cuba’s Central Bank issued a resolution establishing rules to regulate the use of virtual assets in business transactions and licensing of service providers in that sector.
In a resolution published on Thursday, the Cuban Central Bank (BCC) said it might approve, for reasons of socio-economic interest, the use of certain virtual assets in business transactions and license virtual asset service providers for operations identified with financial, trade, and investment or payment activities.
As per the BCC, financial institutions and other legal entities may just use virtual assets among themselves and with normal persons to complete monetary and mercantile operations, and trade and swap transactions, as well as to satisfy pecuniary obligations.
The entity was definite that a virtual asset is understood as the advanced representation of significant worth that can be exchanged or transferred digitally and used for payments or investments.
The BCC also explained that persons assume the civil and criminal risks and liabilities derived from working with virtual assets and service providers that work outside the banking and financial system, despite the fact that transactions with virtual assets between these persons are not prohibited.
Then again, the resolution stipulated that administration agencies must shun using virtual assets in transactions, besides in cases approved by the Central Bank of Cuba.
As per the BCC, in any event, when such virtual assets and the providers of such services work outside the banking and financial system, their management implies risks for monetary policy and financial stability, because of the great instability that characterizes them and their use in information networks in cyberspace.
The BCC also said that cryptocurrencies infer risks of being used to back criminal activities, given the excessive namelessness of the users registered in such networks and of the transactions derived from their use.
