Company Name: Of the park
Founders: Francisco Chavarria (CEO) and Carlos Chida (CTO)
Date of establishment: March 2023
Headquarters location: Austin, TX
Number of Employees: Four fully; one time
Website: https://www.yopaki.com/
Public or Private? What is confidential
In 2021, Francisco Chavarria stood in the audience at Bitcoin 2021 and watched as Strike CEO Jack Mallers delivered his now famous keynote where he revealed that El Salvador plans to make bitcoin legal tender.
That moment sparked something inside Chavarria.
“It was unlike anything I had seen in my professional career,” Chavarria told Bitcoin Magazine.
“I knew I had to do something in the Bitcoin space after that. It was a seed,” he added.
Fast forward two years, and Chavarria found himself putting aside his job as a Software as a Service (SaaS) consultant to draw up the blueprints for Yopaki, a neobank and investment program focused on Bitcoin, aimed at helping people. in his home country, Mexico. (Users outside of Mexico can use Yopaki’s non-reserved lighting bag.)
Since then, he and his co-founder, Carlos Chida, have been hard at work bringing Yopaki to life, including participating in Wolf’s Bitcoin Accelerator program in an effort to make Yopaki as complex and powerful as possible.
But before we get to that part of the story, let’s start with the cultural origins of the speaker’s name.
What’s in a Name?
“The name Yopaki comes from the ancient Nahuatl language, the language spoken by the Aztecs,” Chavarria explained.
“The Aztecs lived in the middle of what is now Mexico, and they are responsible for the great towers throughout Latin America. The historic center of this place is called Teotihuacán, ‘place of the gods,’” he added.
“The word itself, if I were to translate it into English, means ‘the pursuit of happiness.'”
Judging by the name alone, it’s clear that Chavarria sees Yopaki as more than just another business endeavor — he wants it to have a big impact on those who use it.
And he’ll need an app to have that kind of impact if he and his team are to succeed in their mission: to turn every Mexican into a Bitcoiner.
2025 Dream Predictions for Bitcoin in Mexico 🇲🇽😶🌫️
1. Bitcoin acceptance is increasing in Mexico.
2. Mexican Bitcoin startups attract global investors. With the influence of El Salvador, Mexico becomes the Latin American leader for Bitcoin innovation.
3. The Peso-Bitcoin integration is deepening.…
– Francisco Chavarria (@FranciscoBTC) December 31, 2024
Bitcoin In The Mexican Context
When Bitcoin is brought up in the context of Latin America and other developing regions, it is often referred to as a tool to “bank the unbanked.”
However, the banking system in Mexico is “very advanced,” according to Chavarria.
“The infrastructure has been built so that people can access the banks,” he explained.
“It may not be the same bank that we have in the US (where Chavarria currently lives), but, for example, in Mexico, there are stores like 7/11s called OXXOs, and they are everywhere. Anyone can go into -OXXO with ID, and within 20 minutes, he can come out with a Visa card and an app,” he added.
“It’s not exactly a bank, but it provides access to payment methods,” he added.
Chavarria went on to share that these Visa cards charge high fees, however.
He said: “They are very cruel in that sense.
Therefore, Yopaki offers its Mexican users access to three different currency accounts: a Mexican peso account, a US dollar account and a (non-custodial) bitcoin Lightning wallet. Each of these accounts allows its users to operate at lower rates than the specified Visa cards. (By 2025, Yopaki will enable its Mexican users to buy stocks, ETFs and other securities, too.)
By offering a bitcoin wallet alongside traditional financial accounts, Chavarria hopes to validate bitcoin in the eyes of its users. However, he feels that Yopaki has some work to do in terms of helping Mexicans become comfortable with using bitcoin, which is why he and his team are doing everything they can to make the process fun.
Making Bitcoin fun with Lotería
Lotería it is a favorite pastime of Mexicans. It is comparable to Bingo but with pictures instead of numbers.
Chavarria and the Yopaki team put it into the app with a Bitcoin slant – concepts and characters like Lightning Network and Max Keizer appear in the Yopaki version of the game.
“When it comes to Mexico, people think of tequila, tacos, mariachi, and Lotería,” said Chavarria.
“There is nothing missing in this game. Because of this, the response we got in the last few months was, ‘Guys, I didn’t think Bitcoin was cool,’” he added.
Users earn sats as they play Lotería within the app. Once they have earned 1,000 sats or more, they can learn through the app how to transfer those sats from Yopaki’s stock to their own, all within the Yopaki app.
Yopaki has teamed up with Breez to bring its users a storage-free Lightning wallet that doesn’t require its users to deal with the hassle of managing a Lightning channel.
Park + Breez
“One of the main reasons we decided to go with Breez was that we knew about their use of the Nodeless SDK through Liquid before it went public,” Chavarria said.
“We know that station management is a road block for many people when they use a system like this. The second you present roadblocks the feeling is scary. It’s getting worse,” he added.
“So, in providing a product where users can make transactions quickly, that magic that we’ve all had as Bitcoiners can be brought to the masses.”
Chavarria went on to share that the Yopaki Sombani wallet is so easy to use that even her mother-in-law is using (and enjoying) the product.
He is excited to bring such a product to the Mexican market, because, as he put it, Mexicans have been “amazed” by storage solutions in the past.
“It is important that we inform users that we do not hold their money,” said Chavarria.
Prioritizing Bitcoin Education
The Yopaki team not only encourages and prioritizes self-governance, but also educates its users about Bitcoin, because they do not underestimate their curiosity and ability to learn.
“We have selected content that includes lessons on broad topics such as ‘What is money?’ – not just Bitcoin, but money,” Chavarria explained.
“Small lessons that take one to two minutes to complete. At the end of the day, it’s about creating curiosity that I feel and I think a lot of us feel that the legacy system doesn’t care about,” he added.
The education component within the app also sets it apart from its competitors in the region.
“Bitso is a very big player not only in Mexico but all of Latin America, and we have a lot of respect for what they have done, but they have turned into a casino with tokens and NFTs and all that,” shared Chavarria. “We believe that they have underestimated the curiosity of their users and have only awakened the addictive side of gambling.”
Guidance From The Wolf
Seeing how cool, calm and collected Chavarria was when I spoke to him, I got the impression that Yopaki’s finished vision came to him quite easily, perhaps even suddenly.
But he told me otherwise.
Obviously, his experience with Chida in the first Wolf’s Bitcoin incubator pushed them out of their comfort zone and it was the attitude that helped them make Yopaki as unique as it is.
“It was one of the most important and meaningful events that we could have gone through,” Chavarria said of his time at Wolf. “The kind of feedback we got and the kind of strategy session we had was, to put it mildly, brutal in a good way.”
Chavarria explained how he and Chida went into the Wolf program thinking they already had a solid idea for Yopaki, but that the direction they received from the program pushed them to create more features that set the app apart. to others like it.
“Having people like Kelly Brewster (Wolf’s CEO), who has years of experience at Goldman Sachs, and Ross Stevens (Wolf’s founder) sit down and ask tough questions and push you to the limit was powerful,” Chavarria said. “They really made us think ‘Do you understand that what you are doing is difficult?’ and make us reveal how we will carry out our plan.”
Next Year
As mentioned, Yopaki will enable its Mexican users to start investing in traditional currencies next year and, starting next month, will offer users a bitcoin exchange, too.
In addition, it will provide its users with debit cards that they can use to spend their pesos, dollars or bitcoin. And Chavarria says he plans to offer back-seat rewards when users buy physical assets or bitcoin through the app.
With more pike to come, Chavarria is in good spirits.
“I’m very grateful that we’re doing this,” she said.
“It’s been a lot of fun building on the bear – now the good times are coming.”