The Bitcoin Valley Program in Honduras Now Operational

Cryptocurrency adoption in Latin America continues. In the tourist town of Santa Lucia, Honduras, customers can now use Bitcoin to make purchases.

The program, named Bitcoin Valley, was created by the town in cooperation with the crypto exchange Coincaex, Blockchain Honduras, and the Technological University of Honduras. The crypto exchange is providing the technological infrastructure necessary for crypto payments, while the latter two will be educating the people as to the use of digital wallets.

Upon receiving payments in crypto, stores in Santa Lucia will transfer it immediately to Coincaex. The exchange will then transfer the Bitcoin into Honduran Lempira (Honduras’ fiat currency), in order to avoid losses for stores due to the ever-changing price of crypto.

The key aim behind this move is to help Honduras regain some (or all) of the popularity it enjoyed with tourists prior to the Covid-19 pandemic. According to Macrotrends, Honduras made $556 million in tourism in 2019. However, that number dropped to $189 million next year, with Honduras’ tourism sector yet to recover.