Bitcoin interest is spilling into Honduras
Since El Salvador's president Nayib Bukele first announced intentions to make bitcoin legal tender in June, officials in other developing countries, especially in Latin America, have signaled interest.
By making bitcoin (BTC-USD) legal tender, Bukele believes the government can use the cryptocurrency to boost the country's economy. Most notably, the Salvadoran government plans to accomplish this by eliminating the fees inherent in cross-border transactions through traditional banking services.
Like El Salvador, the neighboring country of Honduras receives a high percentage of its GDP (23.4%) in cross border payments, according
World Bank.
While there's no clear evidence the Honduran government will follow suit, the entrepreneur Mayén said his country is already seeing some of the "spillover effects" of El Salvador's bitcoin adoption. For one, the cryptocurrency billionaire Brock Pierce met the current president of Honduras, Juan Orlando Hernández, earlier this week.
Seeing Pierce's social media posts, Mayén and other members of BUIDL a crypto-themed group composed of hundreds of Hondurans on the social media platform Discord - reached out to Pierce. Days later, Mayén and a couple other BUIDL members found themselves in the presidential suite of Tegucigalpa's Intercontinental hotel
to
the meeting with Pierce. Mayén showed Pierce the ATM which lets customers buy the bitcoin and ethereum (ETHUSD) at a 10% markup.
Though Mayén, 28, is proud of helping open his country's first crypto ATM, his long-term goal is to launch Honduras' first online crypto exchange in the next few months. With the news of El Salvador's adoption, on top of bitcoin's latest bull market run, Mayén told Yahoo Finance that he's felt an increasing urgency to get his crypto exchange off the ground.
According to the entrepreneur, the longer it takes to launch his exchange, the less bitcoin his country's currency, the Lempira, will be able to buy. "There's only going to be 21 million bitcoin in total," said Mayén. (By design, the bitcoin blockchain has a maximum supply of 21 million BTC that can be mined. Once total bitcoins are mined in the year 2140, the asset's payment network will rely solely on fees. The purpose and use of bitcoin will likely change by that point, but owners like Mayén agree the price will be much higher.)
"That's a warning sign. If my exchange launches a year later than I plan, the BTC price could be higher and our Lempira will buy even less bitcoin," said Mayén. Since earning his MBA from Tennessee's University of Memphis and returning to Honduras, Mayén has formed a team of developers to create the exchange.
"It's going slower than I'd like," he said, referring to launching the exchange. Calling the exchange
BitReal, Mayén and team have dedicated "nights and weekends" to building the exchange, having to use normal working hours to earn additional sources of income.
"Starting a business is so hard if you don't have the connections or the capital," he said. Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele has announced that he will propose a law to the Congress, where his party controls a majority, for Bitcoin to become legal tender. El Salvador would become the first country in the world to accept a cryptocurrency as a legal tender. Mayén has supported himself by trading cryptocurrencies like bitcoin and ethereum and translating cryptocurrency education material, thanks to a grant from the Ethereum Foundation.
"For me, trading bitcoin, ethereum and NFTs has provided enough capital to sustain myself so I can build my company in Honduras," said Mayén.
Once a minimum viable product is built for BitReal, Mayén will try to raise capital so he and his team can work on the business full time and hire more people. But finding the right tech talent or starting a crypto business in Honduras is far from easy.
A developing country with a relatively high rate of emigration, or what Mayén called "brain drain," Honduras hasn't seen the same level of crypto adoption as El Salvador. Nonetheless, Mayén and others have formed BUIDL Honduras, a crypto-focused community made up of hundreds of Hondurans on Discord.