Francisco Montenegro on El Salvador's Bitcoin Bankathon hackathon

0:00hey guys ashton here from block west capital and the Crypto Coin Show and we are at the lab bitcoin conference in el salvador the first country to legalize bitcoin legal tender and i'm with francisco montenegro from the open bank project to talk about the bitcoin bankathon bitcoin and el salvador and many other things so thanks so much for taking the time thank you for having me

0:26ashley pleasure to be here and glad to have you in this beautiful country yeah it's it's been an amazing experience so far walking right in there's bitcoin signs everywhere at the airport and it seems like everyone's on the train together and i know there's a lot of initiatives going on in el salvador and your team is working on more initiatives with the first

0:50state-backed hackathon the bitcoin bankathon i would love to get into that but first let's just talk a little bit about the open bank project what you're working on with that how that relates to the hackathon what does it mean to be an open bank yeah thanks ashley so the open bank project started in 2010 basically it's a curious movement because it started

1:17almost in parallel to the bitcoin world yeah but asides from that open banking you know fast forward to now they're both on the same level you know where maybe open banking has more traction from a regulatory standpoint but before i get deep into that i'll tell you how the movement started yeah so the movement started actually the open bank project is the company that pioneered open

1:43banking when our founders submitted a paper to the uk treasury saying that the financial systems and banks they need to make be more transparent more inclusive so with that they passed a proposal that the countries well this started in the uk the uk mandated opening up the financial information and exposing it via apis

2:13following the customer incentive so that gave to the rise of index and many new business models where for example neobanks and now the bank project after that has consulted regulators around the world in supporting their open banking initiatives and they also have a banking technology which is a middleware layer that sits between the core banking system

2:40and third-party third-party apps so data consumers but it's also a layer where you can consume data or integrate crypto assets and in this particular scenario integrate bitcoin into the banks very cool and that's amazing to hear that it actually started around when bitcoin started and now to the point where the first country is legalizing bitcoin as tender

3:07it comes to that point where bitcoin is going to be needed to be integrated into banks for everyday citizens especially in el salvador now that everyone has their bitcoin their tivo wallet and the adoption is starting of course not everybody in the country is going to start using bitcoin on the first day a lot of people just take their free bitcoin and run or they

3:28some of them get interested and they want to learn more about it as it starts getting integrated into the banking system i'm curious on how you see neil banks in el salvador moving into 2022 and for the next five years as bitcoin gets integrated into the country how do you think that's going to affect the banks that are in this country yeah a great question great question i

3:50think that as the banks integrate bitcoin the first thing that it will do it will help adoption because people trust their banks yeah so people that can have access to bitcoin through their bank are more likely to have it as someone that does not want to precisely use the chemo wallet for a or b reason this is basically economics and it goes

4:18down to the choices if you keep the consumer choices they will tend to decide on different ones and if there's no choices you will tend to exclude some people out so in terms of the neo-bank i think this will really help because it will be a complete new business model where some parts of the population will be able to open a wallet that has on the back end

4:43banking services provided by the banks but do not necessarily have to go to a branch and they can benefit from having that bitcoin to fiat convertibility powered by a bank definitely and i love that because i really don't like going to banks or waiting in bank lineups and we know bitcoin could solve that by doing it all digitally and speaking of banks in el salvador

5:06this bitcoin bankathon the hackathon is the first state-backed hackathon in el salvador and there are banks involved in that maybe you could talk about that a little bit yeah it's not precisely backed by the state but it's done for a state-owned bank yeah so this hackathon the main goal is to create well there's five main goals right but the creativity

5:35you can put all these goals in one and i think it's creating that infrastructure to enable a first neopaq to rise that incorporates bitcoin but we're also tackling onto other challenges like we're design remittances we'll know how big also there is on remittances and how can you improve the remittances leveraging bitcoin

6:02so i think that point you know the people that receive remittances they cannot incur in volatility so i think the main challenge is abstracting away the volatility when they receive the bitcoin so then we have other challenges which resound with the ethos of the band which are how you can use open biking data and smart contracts to battle climate change

6:28how can you empower merchants because you have seen maybe here you know there's some places that still do not accept bitcoin and i have seen many people that have come to the bitcoin find this shocking and i think it's a matter of giving the consumer choices so they can accept a bitcoin and we're going to do this or show the art of the possible in the hackathon and last but

6:53not least the female population of el salvador has been known to be underserved by the financial system so now that we have bitcoin how can we use bitcoin to empower women with better access to financial services definitely all great initiatives with this hackathon that is coming up and i know it's starting tomorrow on the on the final day of the

7:21conference that in person here but it actually goes for three plus weeks right yes it goes through three weeks tomorrow is the opening ceremony and then we have a in-person closure of the hackathon where the last three days participants from all over the world will come and we'll have some coaches there you know just to help them change the look and feel of their designs like ui ux

7:47codes then on the second day you know developers when they come from all over the world that they form a team and they don't have that background in pitching it's important that we using a pitch coach so they can convey the real message and show the value to the jury so we also the second day is for pitch coaches and the third day is the award ceremony

8:10very cool and from what i understand this is not just for you know el salvadorians although the goals are focused on helping the country and other people i know americans or anybody else can also participate is that right yes this is without the beauty of this hackathon that it maintains the fabrics of what makes bitcoin bitcoin you know the bitcoin is an industry

8:34driven by the community and now we want to make banks adopt bitcoin so we're also inviting the community to come here and give their you know grain of salt to this project that hopefully you know whatever happens here can be a beacon of light to the rest of the world definitely and so far with the legalization of bitcoin in el salvador

9:01It's really you know bitcoin is one thing but the technology underlying bitcoin and smart contracts and blockchain in general i think has solved a lot of problems and hopefully it's opening up people's eyes in el salvador you know bitcoin is like the gateway drug to all of accessing all of this other value based on what you've seen in the country

9:22so far since the legalization are you seeing a positive sentiment towards innovation using this technology to make a better life for people in el salvador yes i mean like with every change there comes a degree of resistance and that degree of resistance can be intensified by a lack of proper understanding and i think this is one of the main challenges that el salvador

9:46have and the bitcoin community if they actually support the bitcoin law they should find ways of how they can come here you know the doors are open for the bitcoin community so how they can come here and how they can help these challenges of improving the knowledge of the community because that ultimately drives the goal and whatever happens here you know it's

10:09going to be president for the rest of the world who knows maybe maybe next year panama uruguay yeah so we have to do it right and the community needs to be aware of that definitely yeah and to set a good example as well you know as the first country to legalize bitcoin i'm pretty sure it will not be the last it's just a matter of when not if and for the people that are interested in

10:35learning more about the open bank project and about the hackathon how to get involved what are the different solutions that they can potentially work on what's the best way for people to learn more about that yeah they can go to www.bitcoin.alliance.org and they can sign up there join the discord channel and they can engage with the community find a team

10:58and also apply to be mentors and if they want to find you it's very important they sign up to the dev post so they're eligible for prices amazing well thank you so much francisco thank you i will put all those links in the description as well and all the best with the had fun and let's follow up in the near future yeah absolutely