Firm Identify: Yopaki
Founders: Francisco Chavarria (CEO) and Carlos Chida (CTO)
Date Based: March 2023
Location of Headquarters: Austin, TX
Variety of Workers: 4 full time; one half time
Web site: https://www.yopaki.com/
Public or Personal? Personal
In 2021, Francisco Chavarria stood within the viewers at Bitcoin 2021 and watched as Strike CEO Jack Mallers passionately delivered his now well-known keynote speech throughout which he revealed that El Salvador deliberate to make bitcoin authorized tender.
That second sparked one thing inside Chavarria.
“It was unlike anything I’d experienced in my professional career,” Chavarria instructed Bitcoin Journal.
“I knew I had to do something in the Bitcoin space after that. It was the seed,” he added.
First-forward forward two years, and Chavarria discovered himself placing his profession as a Software program as a Service (SaaS) marketing consultant on maintain to attract up the blueprints for Yopaki, a neobank and funding app with a Bitcoin-focus, aimed toward serving the individuals of his residence nation, Mexico. (Customers exterior of Mexico may also use Yopaki’s non-custodial Lighting pockets.)
Since then, he and his co-founder, Carlos Chida, have been exhausting at work bringing Yopaki to life, together with collaborating in Wolf’s Bitcoin Accelerator program in efforts to make Yopaki as cutting-edge and dynamic as doable.
However earlier than attending to that a part of the story, let’s begin with the cultural origin of the platform’s identify.
What’s In A Identify?
“The name Yopaki comes from the ancient language Nahuatl, the language spoken by the Aztecs,” defined Chavarria.
“The Aztecs lived in the center region of what today is Mexico, and they’re the ones responsible for some of the biggest pyramids in all of Latin America. The center of this historical place is called Teotihuacán, ‘the place of the gods,’” he added.
“The name itself, if I were to translate it into English, most closely means “the pursuit of happiness.’”
Judging by the identify alone, it’s clear that Chavarria views Yopaki as extra than simply one other enterprise endeavor — he desires it to have a profound impression on those that use it.
And he’ll want the app to have such an impression if he and his workforce are to reach their mission: to show each Mexican right into a Bitcoiner.
2025 Dream Predictions for Bitcoin in Mexico 🇲🇽😶🌫️
1. Bitcoin adoption in Mexico surges.
2. Mexican Bitcoin startups entice world traders. With El Salvador’s affect, Mexico turns into the Latin American chief for Bitcoin innovation.
3. Peso-Bitcoin integration deepens.…
— Francisco Chavarria (@FranciscoBTC) December 31, 2024
Bitcoin In The Mexican Context
When Bitcoin is introduced up within the context of Latin America and different creating areas, it’s typically referenced as a software to “bank the unbanked.”
Nonetheless, Mexico’s banking system is “quite advanced,” in accordance with Chavarria.
“The infrastructure has been built for people to have access to banking,” he defined.
“It may not be the same banking that we have in the U.S. (where Chavarria currently resides), but, for example, in Mexico, there are stores like 7/11s called OXXOs, and they’re everywhere. Any person can walk into an OXXO with an ID, and within 20 minutes, they can walk out with a Visa card and an app,” he added.
“It’s not exactly a bank, but it provides access to payment rails,” he added.
Chavarria went on to share that these Visa playing cards cost excessive charges, although.
“They’re very predatory in that sense,” he stated.
So, Yopaki offers its Mexican customers with entry to a few totally different financial accounts: a Mexican peso account, a U.S. greenback account and a (non-custodial) bitcoin Lightning pockets. Every of those accounts lets their customers transact at decrease charges than stated Visa playing cards. (In 2025, Yopaki may even allow its Mexican customers to purchase shares, ETFs and different securities, as properly.)
By providing a bitcoin pockets alongside accounts for conventional currencies, Chavarria hopes to legitimize bitcoin within the eyes of its customers. Nonetheless, he additionally feels that Yopaki has some work to do so far as serving to Mexicans to get comfy utilizing bitcoin, which is why he and his workforce are doing what they’ll to make the method pleasing.
Making Bitcoin Enjoyable With Lotería
Lotería is a favourite pastime of the Mexican individuals. It’s akin to Bingo however with photos as an alternative of numbers.
Chavarria and the Yopaki workforce included it into the app with a Bitcoin slant — ideas and characters just like the Lightning Community and Max Keiser seem within the Yopaki model of the sport.
“When it comes to Mexico, people think tequila, tacos, mariachi, and Lotería,” stated Chavarria.
“There’s no negative connotation to the game. Because of this, the feedback we’ve received over the last couple of months has been, ‘Man, I didn’t realize that Bitcoin was fun,’” he added.
Customers earn sats as they play Lotería inside the app. After they’ve earned 1,000 sats or extra, they’ll study by way of the app learn how to switch these sats from Yopaki’s custody into their very own, all inside the Yopaki app.
Yopaki teamed up with Breez to deliver its customers a non-custodial Lightning pockets that doesn’t require its customers to to cope with the effort of Lightning channel administration.
Yopaki + Breez
“One of the main reasons we decided to go with Breez is that we knew about their implementation of the Nodeless SDK through Liquid before it was public,” stated Chavarria.
“We know channel management is a fundamental roadblock for a lot of people in using an application like this. The second you introduce roadblocks the experience becomes scary. It’s just too much,” he added.
“So, in offering a product in which users can do an immediate transaction, that magic that we’ve all had as Bitcoiners can be brought to the masses.”
Chavarria went on to share that Yopaki’s Lightning pockets is really easy to make use of that even his mother-in-law is now utilizing (and having fun with) the product.
He’s excited to deliver such a product to the Mexican market, as a result of, as he put it, Mexicans “have been rugged” by custodial options prior to now.
“It’s important that we let users know that we don’t hold their funds,” stated Chavarria.
Prioritizing Bitcoin Training
Not solely does the Yopaki workforce encourage and prioritize self-sovereignty, but it surely additionally educates its customers about Bitcoin, because it doesn’t underestimate their curiosity and talent to study.
“We have curated content including lessons on broad topics like ‘What is money?’ — not just Bitcoin, but money,” defined Chavarria.
“They’re micro lessons that take anywhere from one to two minutes to complete. At the end of the day, it’s about creating a curiosity that I feel and I think a lot of us feel the legacy system has not really cared about,” he added.
The tutorial element inside the app additionally units it other than its opponents within the area.
“Bitso is the largest player not just in Mexico but all of Latin America, and we have a lot of respect for what they’ve done, but they have turned into a casino with tokens and NFTs and all of that,” shared Chavarria. “We believe they have really underestimated the curiosity of their users and just triggered the degenerate gambling addiction side of things instead.”
Steering From Wolf
Given how cool, calm and picked up Chavarria was after I spoke with him, I obtained the impression that the now fleshed out imaginative and prescient for Yopaki got here to him with relative ease, perhaps even in a flash of sunshine.
However he instructed me in any other case.
Apparently, he and Chida’s expertise at Wolf’s Bitcoin startup incubator pushed them out of their consolation zone and right into a way of thinking that helped them to make Yopaki as distinctive as it’s.
“It was one of the most important and meaningful experiences we could have gone through,” stated Chavarria of his time at Wolf. “The type of feedback we received and the type of strategy sessions we had were, to say it nicely, brutal in a good way.”
Chavarria defined how he and Chida did, the truth is, enter the Wolf program considering they’d already crafted a stable imaginative and prescient for Yopaki, however that the steering they obtained in this system is what pushed them to create most of the options that differentiate the apps for others prefer it.
“Having people like Kelly Brewster (Wolf’s CEO), who has years of experience at Goldman Sachs, and Ross Stevens (Wolf’s founder) really sit down and ask the tough questions and push you to the limit was powerful,” stated Chavarria. “They made us really consider ‘Do you understand that what you’re doing is difficult?’ and made us articulate how we were going to execute our plan.”
The 12 months Forward
As talked about, Yopaki will allow its Mexican customers to start investing in conventional property within the coming yr and, beginning subsequent month, it’ll supply customers a bitcoin change, as properly.
What’s extra, it’ll problem its customers debit playing cards that they’ll use to spend their pesos, {dollars} or bitcoin. And Chavarria says it plans to supply sats again rewards when customers buy both conventional property or bitcoin by way of the app.
With a lot coming down the pike, Chavarria is in good spirits.
“I’m just grateful that we’re doing this,” he stated.
“It’s been really fun to build in the bear — now the good times are coming.”