Paper short abstract:

Amidst a massive inflation surge after Cuba’s ill-timed currency unification, the crypto play-to-earn game Axie Infinity emerged as a financial lifeline, intertwining with the local economy in complex ways. It provided Cubans with economic adaptability, yet also perpetuated global inequalities.

Paper long abstract:

On January 1, 2021, the Cuban government unified the country’s two national currencies, the Cuban Peso and the dollar-pegged Peso Convertible. While this was a central promise of Raúl Castro’s reform course, it was implemented at the worst possible moment, at the height of a global economic recession, leading to an inflationary push of an estimated 500%. What emerged as an unexpected economic lifeline for many tech-savvy young Cubans was play-to-earn crypto video games such as Axie Infinity, in which players breed, battle, and trade digital pets. This game by the Vietnamese company Sky Mavis became a massive phenomenon in the Global South during the pandemic, allowing players to earn hundreds of dollars per month. Earnings were in the in-game cryptocurrency, which Cuban players then exchanged on dedicated Telegram groups for stablecoins, hard currency, or pesos they needed for everyday spending. It became entangled in the local economy in complex ways.

In these Telegram groups, new intermediaries emerged that facilitated trustworthy exchanges between crypto and fiat money between strangers for a fee. Furthermore, because the game required significant initial investments, a parallel economy emerged in which companies and individuals (often from the Global North) granted "scholarships," loaning Axies to players unable to cover the upfront costs, with the stipulation that significant portions of players’ earnings would be shared with the providers. I will explore how the game’s token carved out a space for improvised economic resilience while, at the same time, reproducing historical conditions of global inequality.