Firm Identify: Yopaki
Founders: Francisco Chavarria (CEO) and Carlos Chida (CTO)
Date Based: March 2023
Location of Headquarters: Austin, TX
Variety of Staff: 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 not like something I’d skilled in my skilled profession,” Chavarria informed Bitcoin Journal.
“I knew I needed to do one thing within the Bitcoin area 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) guide on maintain to attract up the blueprints for Yopaki, a neobank and funding app with a Bitcoin-focus, geared toward serving the folks of his dwelling nation, Mexico. (Customers outdoors of Mexico can even use Yopaki’s non-custodial Lighting pockets.)
Since then, he and his co-founder, Carlos Chida, have been laborious 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 title.
What’s In A Identify?
“The title Yopaki comes from the traditional language Nahuatl, the language spoken by the Aztecs,” defined Chavarria.
“The Aztecs lived within the middle area of what at present is Mexico, and so they’re those chargeable for a few of the greatest pyramids in all of Latin America. The middle of this historic place known as Teotihuacán, ‘the place of the gods,’” he added.
“The title itself, if I had been to translate it into English, most carefully means “the pursuit of happiness.’”
Judging by the title alone, it’s clear that Chavarria views Yopaki as extra than simply one other enterprise endeavor — he needs it to have a profound affect on those that use it.
And he’ll want the app to have such an affect if he and his staff 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 international 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 usually referenced as a instrument to “financial institution the unbanked.”
Nonetheless, Mexico’s banking system is “fairly superior,” in response to Chavarria.
“The infrastructure has been constructed for folks to have entry to banking,” he defined.
“It might not be the identical banking that we have now within the U.S. (the place Chavarria at the moment resides), however, for instance, in Mexico, there are shops like 7/11s referred to as OXXOs, and so they’re in every single place. Any particular person can stroll into an OXXO with an ID, and inside 20 minutes, they’ll stroll out with a Visa card and an app,” he added.
“It’s not precisely a financial institution, nevertheless it supplies entry to cost 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 supplies its Mexican customers with entry to 3 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 also 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 staff are doing what they’ll to make the method satisfying.
Making Bitcoin Enjoyable With Lotería
Lotería is a favourite pastime of the Mexican folks. It’s corresponding to Bingo however with photos as an alternative of numbers.
Chavarria and the Yopaki staff 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.
“In the case of Mexico, folks assume tequila, tacos, mariachi, and Lotería,” stated Chavarria.
“There’s no unfavourable connotation to the sport. Due to this, the suggestions we have obtained over the past couple of months has been, ‘Man, I did not understand that Bitcoin was enjoyable,’” he added.
Customers earn sats as they play Lotería throughout the app. Once they’ve earned 1,000 sats or extra, they’ll be taught by means of the app find out how to switch these sats from Yopaki’s custody into their very own, all throughout the Yopaki app.
Yopaki teamed up with Breez to convey its customers a non-custodial Lightning pockets that doesn’t require its customers to to take care of the trouble of Lightning channel administration.
Yopaki + Breez
“One of many essential causes we determined to go along with Breez is that we knew about their implementation of the Nodeless SDK by means of Liquid earlier than it was public,” stated Chavarria.
“We all know channel administration is a elementary roadblock for lots of people in utilizing an software like this. The second you introduce roadblocks the expertise turns into scary. It’s simply an excessive amount of,” he added.
“So, in providing a product by which customers can do a direct transaction, that magic that we have all had as Bitcoiners may be dropped at the lots.”
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 convey such a product to the Mexican market, as a result of, as he put it, Mexicans “have been rugged” by custodial options previously.
“It’s necessary that we let customers know that we don’t maintain their funds,” stated Chavarria.
Prioritizing Bitcoin Training
Not solely does the Yopaki staff encourage and prioritize self-sovereignty, nevertheless it additionally educates its customers about Bitcoin, because it doesn’t underestimate their curiosity and talent to be taught.
“We have now curated content material together with classes on broad matters like ‘What’s cash?’ — not simply Bitcoin, however cash,” defined Chavarria.
“They’re micro classes that take wherever from one to 2 minutes to finish. On the finish of the day, it is about making a curiosity that I really feel and I feel plenty of us really feel the legacy system has probably not cared about,” he added.
The academic part throughout the app additionally units it aside from its opponents within the area.
“Bitso is the biggest participant not simply in Mexico however all of Latin America, and we have now plenty of respect for what they’ve executed, however they’ve become a on line casino with tokens and NFTs and all of that,” shared Chavarria. “We consider they’ve actually underestimated the curiosity of their customers and simply triggered the degenerate playing dependancy facet of issues as an alternative.”
Steering From Wolf
Given how cool, calm and picked up Chavarria was once I spoke with him, I acquired the impression that the now fleshed out imaginative and prescient for Yopaki got here to him with relative ease, possibly even in a flash of sunshine.
However he informed 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 vital necessary and significant experiences we might have gone by means of,” stated Chavarria of his time at Wolf. “The kind of suggestions we obtained and the kind of technique periods we had had been, to say it properly, brutal in a great way.”
Chavarria defined how he and Chida did, in actual fact, 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 lots of the options that differentiate the apps for others prefer it.
“Having folks like Kelly Brewster (Wolf’s CEO), who has years of expertise at Goldman Sachs, and Ross Stevens (Wolf’s founder) actually sit down and ask the robust questions and push you to the restrict was highly effective,” stated Chavarria. “They made us actually take into account ‘Do you perceive that what you are doing is tough?’ and made us articulate how we had been going to execute our plan.”
The Yr 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 should provide customers a bitcoin change, as properly.
What’s extra, it should 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 am simply grateful that we’re doing this,” he stated.
“It has been actually enjoyable to construct within the bear — now the nice instances are coming.”