Erich García, From Cuba’s #1 Tech Influencer to U.S. Startup Founder: The Cuban-American Dream
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.
Tim Parsa · Co-Founder & CCO, QvaPay · 20 September 2026 · 5 min read Subscribe
Erich García Cruz taught Cuba the internet economy from a phone in Havana. Then he built the rails to get paid in it. Then the state came for him, and he did what my father did: he left and kept building.
- Bachecubano. Erich started Bachecubano in 2014 as a classifieds site and turned it into Cuba’s best-known tech channel: guides, reviews, and tutorials for a country learning the internet one data package at a time. More than 120,000 people subscribed.
- BitRemesas. With a co-founder, Erich built BitRemesas, a remittance service for Cuba’s private sector. A sender abroad sent crypto; peers in Cuba bid to deliver the cash, some by bicycle across Havana. It was a peer market before anyone in Cuba called it one.
- QvaPay, hoping to extend Airtm. He built QvaPay, a dollar account on a phone, for the audience that learned the internet on his channel. The plan was bigger: bring Airtm’s peer dollar network to Cuba. I reached Erich in December 2020. From 2021 to 2023, QvaPay connected to Airtm through the Airtm Cuba Sandbox, and in 2023 we put the questions to OFAC.
- QvaPay, its own startup. QvaPay grew in Cuba to more than 150,000 registered Cuban enterprise and personal accounts (QvaPay records, October 2026), with Erich shipping product faster than any team I’ve worked with.
- The pressure. A Cuban who shows other Cubans how to earn and hold dollars outside the state is a problem for the state. The authorities made sure he knew it, then threatened his family.
- Out. Erich got his family out and came to the United States. Today he leads QvaPay, Inc., a U.S. company registered with FinCEN that runs QvaPay under U.S. law.
My father made the same trip a generation earlier. He supported Mossadegh, fled political oppression in Iran, studied in Geneva, and came to the United States as a doctor. America didn’t care where he came from. It asked what he could do and let him do it.
Erich is living the same story. Two men, two regimes that wanted control more than talent, one country that pays for talent.
Erich had to leave Cuba to build freely. QvaPay exists so the next Erich doesn’t have to: U.S. technology and dollar access, delivered to Cuban talent where it lives.
The regime made Erich an exile. America made him a founder. Now he builds the rail that carries America back to the Cubans he left behind.
Erich built these flows in Havana, peer to peer; QvaPay, Inc. now carries them under U.S. law, with the pending ones before OFAC.
| Flow | How we grow it | U.S. tech meets Cuban talent |
|---|---|---|
| Remittances Permitted · 31 CFR §515.570 (U.S. senders) | Marketing by use case to the diaspora in Miami and beyond; every sender and recipient screened. | Diaspora dollars become working capital for families and the private businesses they start. |
| P2P forex Pending with OFAC · no authorization asserted | SkyMind matches orders and more screened traders join. | Every trader is a small business: Cubans earn a spread connecting dollars and pesos. |
| Crypto funding and withdrawals Own funds, screened addresses · withdrawals by persons in Cuba: pending with OFAC | USDC from and to screened wallets, settled by Crypto Teller. | Cubans hold dollars on a phone, the way the rest of the internet does. |
| Payments to digital entrepreneurs Permitted for U.S. clients · §515.582, §515.340(b) · the freelancer's balance in Cuba: pending with OFAC | When OFAC answers, we market to Cuban freelancers and their U.S. clients. | Cuban coders, designers, and writers sell their skills to the world. |
The potential. Remittances into Cuba run an estimated $1.1–2B a year (2024; estimates vary). At the Dominican Republic’s rate per person, Cuba would receive about $9.8B, five to nine times today. That is the market QvaPay is built to serve.
| Market | Cuba today | Cuba at the Dominican Republic’s rate per person |
|---|---|---|
| Remittances received | $1.1–2B 2024 est., estimates vary | $9.8B DR total $11.9B (2025) |
A scenario, not a forecast. The Dominican Republic received $11.9B in remittances in 2025 across 11.4 million people, about $1,040 a person; at that rate Cuba’s 9.43 million people would receive about $9.8B a year, five to nine times today. Method and sources.
Cuba’s private sector is neither a boom nor a mirage: a large, growing class of entrepreneurs operating outside the state, fragile but real, that U.S. policy should engage directly. On cubanew.com ↗
Sources
- Erich García Cruz, Bachecubano (YouTube) ↗
- PanamericanWorld, "Erich García, the Ambassador of Bitcoin in Cuba" ↗
- Rest of World, RoW100 profile: Erich García Cruz, May 2022 ↗
- DW via Forbes Colombia, a Cuban startup uses bitcoin to get around the embargo (BitRemesas), December 2020 ↗
- AFP via Diario de Cuba, bitcoin remittances arrive in Cuba by bicycle, October 2020 ↗
- Havana Times, "Western Union to Shut Down Cuba Operations Nov. 23rd", 2020 ↗
- Cubanet, QvaPay, an international e-commerce platform from Cuba, January 2021 ↗
- Tim Parsa, "Independent Digital Entrepreneurs in Cuba" (the 2023 OFAC guidance request, published December 2025) ↗
- FinCEN, MSB registrant search ↗
- QvaPay, AML/BSA program and transparency page ↗
If this was useful, pass it to someone building in Cuba.