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Cuba Uses Big Data To Help Tourism, But Their Networks Lack Capacity
dkatana writes: The Cuban government is very active in reshaping the country's industry, not only focusing on leisure and cultural tourism. The biggest challenge, however, is the quality of Internet connections. Cuba's global ranking for Internet speed is 196 out of 200, averaging 1.6 Mbps, just ahead of Guinea, Gambia, Equatorial Guinea, and Niger.
Another thing that Cuba lacks: free movement of currency, as reader lpress points out: Cuba has two paper currencies — the Peso and the Convertible Peso or CUC. CUCs are worth about $1 and Pesos, which are used for government salaries, are worth about $.04. But, what about Bitcoin? The first Cuban Bitcoin transaction is history. Will Bitcoin be used by Cubans and Americans to sell goods and services without the knowledge of their governments? Cuban offshore developers might be the first to use Bitcoin.
While the US is just now starting to establish ties with this country again, I think that we have a pretty good chance at setting up several shops and improving the connectivity in this country. This could be a giant boom to the industry which we could so greatly use.
Place something witty here
Will the cryptoloons and techno-anarchists ever give up trying to push their awful solution everywhere and anywhere in hopes of a price bump?
7 transactions per second, costs more the traditions methods, no consumer protections, easy to get ripped off, impossible to use securely.
Just let it die, already, the experiment failed.
It's funny they cite Ookla’s Net Index, given that the site has been dead since last week (take down August 4th, but not updated for a while before that), and it relies on statistics gathered by their "Internet Speed Test" site, which is not going to be accurate for Cuba, since it relies on "nearby" central nodes for the testing.
They have a peering connection via optical fiber to Venezuela (restricted), and a relatively slow link to Sprint in the U.S., which has to be the source of the Ookla numbers for them.
Move to Soviet Nordland and you can have both good healthcare and fast internet. :) No sun, though.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Just checked when we passed 1.6 Mbps average here in Norway - that was around 2005-2006. So one of the poorest connected countries in the world is just as good off as we were ten years ago. So you probably don't want to use YouTube and Netflix much, but seriously.... there's no problem downloading a Linux ISO or whatever else you want over a >1 Mbps line if you got a few hours.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Free movement of currency means speculators can attack your currency. A country can deal with it if it has big change reserves, just like Russia a few months ago. I do not have hard data on Cuba, but I do not see how they could hold hundreds of US$ billions in their central bank, given that they have been embargoed for decades.
Therefore I am not sure free movement of currency is what Cuba needs right now.
Will Bitcoin be used by Cubans and Americans to sell goods and services without the knowledge of their governments? Cuban offshore developers might be the first to use Bitcoin.
Three guesses and the second two don't count.
"Which foreign currency is in common use throughout the Caribbean and frequently adopted or accepted as legal tender? "
Currency substitution: Anchor currencies: US Dollar
Now a harder one:
"If prosecuted for an economic crime with $100 million in assets at stake, would you prefer to be tried and sentenced in Cuba or the United States?"
Cuba sentences Canadian CEO to fifteen years on financial charges
Why do people think Bitcoin in anonymous? Well, because at this point people with analytical and critical thinking skills have long since fled Bitcoin if they ever got in in the first place.
Fools and scammers, that's the Bitcoin space right now.
Yeah, Bitcoin sucks. Dogecoin will prevail!