Firm Title: 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 in contrast to 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) advisor on maintain to attract up the blueprints for Yopaki, a neobank and funding app with a Bitcoin-focus, aimed toward serving the folks of his house nation, Mexico. (Customers exterior of Mexico also can use Yopaki’s non-custodial Lighting pockets.)
Since then, he and his co-founder, Carlos Chida, have been arduous 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 Title?
“The identify Yopaki comes from the traditional language Nahuatl, the language spoken by the Aztecs,” defined Chavarria.
“The Aztecs lived within the middle area of what in the present day is Mexico, they usually’re those answerable for a number of the largest pyramids in all of Latin America. The middle of this historic place is named Teotihuacán, ‘the place of the gods,’” he added.
“The identify itself, if I had been to translate it into English, most intently 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 group 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 buyers. 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 device to “financial institution the unbanked.”
Nevertheless, Mexico’s banking system is “fairly superior,” in line with Chavarria.
“The infrastructure has been constructed for folks to have entry to banking,” he defined.
“It might not be the identical banking that we now have within the U.S. (the place Chavarria at present resides), however, for instance, in Mexico, there are shops like 7/11s known as OXXOs, they usually’re in every single place. Any individual 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 offers 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 offers its Mexican customers with entry to 3 completely 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 can even allow its Mexican customers to purchase shares, ETFs and different securities, as effectively.)
By providing a bitcoin pockets alongside accounts for conventional currencies, Chavarria hopes to legitimize bitcoin within the eyes of its customers. Nevertheless, 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 group 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 photographs as a substitute of numbers.
Chavarria and the Yopaki group 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.
“With regards to Mexico, folks suppose tequila, tacos, mariachi, and Lotería,” stated Chavarria.
“There’s no destructive connotation to the sport. Due to this, the suggestions we have acquired during the last couple of months has been, ‘Man, I did not understand that Bitcoin was enjoyable,’” he added.
Customers earn sats as they play Lotería inside the app. Once they’ve earned 1,000 sats or extra, they’ll study by way of the app methods 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 many fundamental causes we determined to go together with Breez is that we knew about their implementation of the Nodeless SDK by way of Liquid earlier than it was public,” stated Chavarria.
“We all know channel administration is a basic 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 during which customers can do a right away transaction, that magic that we have all had as Bitcoiners will be dropped at the plenty.”
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 vital that we let customers know that we don’t maintain their funds,” stated Chavarria.
Prioritizing Bitcoin Training
Not solely does the Yopaki group encourage and prioritize self-sovereignty, nevertheless it additionally educates its customers about Bitcoin, because it doesn’t underestimate their curiosity and talent to study.
“We’ve curated content material together with classes on broad subjects like ‘What’s cash?’ — not simply Bitcoin, however cash,” defined Chavarria.
“They’re micro classes that take anyplace 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 a variety of us really feel the legacy system has probably not cared about,” he added.
The academic element inside the app additionally units it aside from its opponents within the area.
“Bitso is the most important participant not simply in Mexico however all of Latin America, and we now have a variety of respect for what they’ve performed, however they’ve was 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 habit facet of issues as a substitute.”
Steerage 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, perhaps 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 vital and significant experiences we may have gone by way of,” stated Chavarria of his time at Wolf. “The kind of suggestions we acquired 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, actually, enter the Wolf program considering they’d already crafted a strong imaginative and prescient for Yopaki, however that the steering they acquired 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 contemplate ‘Do you perceive that what you are doing is troublesome?’ and made us articulate how we had been 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 would supply customers a bitcoin change, as effectively.
What’s extra, it would situation 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 through 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 great occasions are coming.”
