Techno-Cubanism

From Cleary Gottlieb to Mexico City, Uphold, Airtm, and QvaPay: every time something I built was thriving, I left for a bigger problem to solve.

U.S. companies contract Cuba’s independent entrepreneurs to build, support, and run their technology. QvaPay pays each contractor in dollars, by name, on their own invoice (§515.582; §515.340(b)). Not employment.

Two co-founders, one on product and one on compliance and legal, with their own AI. A compliance officer who is a co-founder, AI for the sweeping, and an independent reviewer.

Almost all the dollars Cuban families abroad send home now move through informal networks: slow, expensive, and risky. QvaPay is the screened, sanctions-aware alternative, and the market can grow many times over.

Ten steps that turn a factory’s goods into a U.S. export to a Cuban private business, with the U.S. exporter paid in Florida.

The state has no hard currency to sell, third-country banks closed their doors, and on 30 September 2026 the offshore route shut. Here’s how Cuba’s private importers got squeezed, and the route that still works.

Bouncer, Sentinel, Crypto Teller, and SkyMind: how two co-founders run a U.S.-to-Cuba payments company on their own AI.

About 3.5 million Cubans live abroad, from Miami to Madrid to Curitiba. Now they can send value home directly, efficiently, and safely, without feeding the regime, leaking their data, or accepting its rigged exchange rate.

Cuba's private importers need solar panels and batteries. On 30 September 2026 the offshore route closed. The one we mapped runs through Florida, under U.S. export rules.

Treasury closed the offshore dollar routes into Cuba and narrowed the U.S. ones. Here’s exactly what moved.

Cuba’s private sector moves about $3 to $4 billion a year across its borders. Give Cuba its neighbors’ economies and that becomes $69 billion to $415 billion.

Every peer trade is a price the state didn’t set, on a dollar the state never touched.

A Havana tech influencer built BitRemesas and QvaPay, faced the regime’s threats against his family, and got out. Now he builds from the United States, as my father once did.

Uphold led to Airtm, Airtm to a fight with Maduro, that fight to a State Department round table on Cuba, and Cuba to Erich and QvaPay.

Todito Cash, Uphold, Airtm, and QvaPay each did two things at once: obeyed local law to the letter and defied assumptions everyone took for granted.

Twenty-nine years ago I flew to Havana on a magazine assignment with my best friend from college, JP Thieriot. What hasn’t changed, and what QvaPay changes.

A friendship from Yale, a trip to Havana, a fintech built together, and now an independent director on QvaPay’s Board.

Guatemala, journalism, law school, Mexico City, Todito Cash, Uphold, Airtm, and a sandbox that became a U.S. fintech for Cuba.

Since QvaPay launched in 2020, Cuba's private sector has grown faster than at any time since 1959. QvaPay grew with it.

QvaPay sits where four circles meet: compliance with U.S. law, defiance of a failed monetary regime, fiat dollars, and crypto rails.

SkyMind, our in-house engine in final development, completes assisted purchases by card, vendor payments by bank, and withdrawals on the peer market, and records every step.

Assisted purchases put U.S. goods in Cuban homes: food, and the solar power the blackouts made essential.

Cuba legalized private small and medium businesses, the MIPYMES, in 2021. They still lacked the most basic business tool.

In 2020 I argued P2P money would go mainstream like Airbnb and Uber. Cuba got there first.

Family money, phone credit, and the small payments that keep a Cuban household running, in dollars, in seconds.

Cuba’s private businesses want U.S. laptops, servers, routers, software, and solar gear. Paying the U.S. seller’s invoice in dollars was the bottleneck.

Cuba's digital entrepreneurs sell code, design, and content to the world. Getting paid is the bottleneck.

Crypto Teller, our in-house crypto processor, records the address and hash on every deposit and withdrawal, and Sentinel clears addresses before a coin moves.

U.S. companies contract independent Cuban talent. Paying it on time, in dollars, used to be the hard part.

Cuba's real exchange rate is set by people, not by the central bank. We built the market they trade on.

I have built money bridges for twenty-six years. All of them were practice for the one to Cuba.

State banks pay the official rate. Remittance agencies left. Cash couriers carry envelopes. The peer market beats all three.

Sentinel screens every party in every flow against the world's sanctions lists before a dollar moves.

Our transaction monitor checks every account every day, restricts on a fail, and puts every case in front of our compliance officer.

Every QvaPay account is a dose: a dollar balance, a market price, a business that answers to customers. Cuba is building immunity.