Bitcoin Bankathon: El Salvador’s Open Invitation For The Open Source Community

Making a duly progressive mark in history by becoming the first country in the world to officially adopt Bitcoin as the legal tender, El Salvador is all set towards designing its financial system to truly incorporate Bitcoin in all banking and financial services. Declaring an open invitation to drive innovation in the very roots of El Salvador’s financial system in the making, the Mortgage Bank of El Salvador recently announced an upcoming event “Bitcoin Bankathon”.

In early October, Banco Hipotecario, whose largest chunk of capital belongs to the country of El Salvador, announced its partnership with four blockchain companies- Open Bank Project, API3, Qredo, and Sovryn, offering a platform for the Bankathon as the Bank’s technology partner for the exemplary hackathon. Tracing the technology alliance to facilitate alleviated financial inclusion in El Salvador, the participating contestants will be moving for one goal, which is to formulate innovative banking and financial applications to offer unmatched Bitcoin-based services to Salvadorans.

Designing The Future Of Bitcoin In El Salvador

Marked to commence on November 19 and to run until December 5 of this year, Bitcoin Bankathon will bring together innovators and developers to participate as individuals or in groups, to be brought together and merged into teams. Throughout the event, developers will walk through 5 challenges and the teams constituting Web 2.0 & 3.0 coders, designers, entrepreneurs, and problem-solvers from around the globe will work together virtually for 2 weeks to culminate and develop working prototypes of their visions. Their ideations constructing a new infrastructure will further redesign the future of financial services in El Salvador.

The president of Banco Hipotecario de El Salvador, Selena Padilla mentioned, “in order to succeed in creating a more inclusive financial services landscape for El Salvador’s citizens, we must begin to proactively drive innovation.”

In his perspective, an event like the “Bitcoin Bankathon” will seep innovation into the applications that are bound to combat centralized barriers while accessing financial services.

The challenges will be focused around the 5 tracks, starting from building the next Bitcoin-enabled “Neobank” to applications for remittances, systems to battle climate change, smart contract-based models that can offer financing to empower merchants and build a track to build financial empowerment for women through the leading cryptocurrency, Bitcoin. Following into the third week, the participants will gain a stand-up opportunity to showcase their talents and code in the heart of Salvador.

Stellar Prizes For The Victorious

The Bitcoin Bankathon is planned to entail sessions with experts in the industry along with networking and tutorials that will allow guide participants to design, and offer their ideas in the best possible version of efficiency and unparalleled construct. Along with offering a virtual meet that will bring together leading innovators, designers, and industry experts to collaborate and network, the event holds a total prize standing at a quarter of a million dollars.

Set to be paid in organizer and sponsor tokens, “Total Best Product” will stand to win a prize of $150K, $50k for “Best Use Of Off-Chain Data”, $25K for “Best Advances Tech”, $15K for “Most Visionary Concept” and $10K for “Social Media hero”.

“Hackathons are always exciting places to be; to generate new business and social ideas, to code, to get exposed to new technologies and processes, to meet new people, to form new partnerships, and of course to demonstrate the results of your hacking!” says Simon Redfern, CEO of TESOBE and founder of the Open Bank Project.

A Strategic Alliance with Leading Blockchain Enterprises

Providing the platform on which the applications will be built for El Salvador’s new Bitcoin-supportive financial system, all four tech leaders partnered with the bank for this visionary project have set forth an open door for the decentralized community to lend a hand in creating a state-of-the-art infrastructure that will guide the future of banking system in El Salvador.

Flaunting their support and trust in the decentralization and their vision for El Salvador’s banking and financial system, the four technology partners are proud to rally their contribution in the country’s future.

“Sovryn is proud to be able to partner with other leading DeFi (decentralized financial) products to bring financial inclusion to Salvadorans that would have been impossible with traditional systems,” says Edan Yago, Core Contributor at Sovryn.

Heikki Vänttinen, co-founder of API3 says, “El Salvador has quickly become a global financial leader by decisively adapting its policies to accommodate the next generation of financial technology and embracing the promise it offers for new levels of inclusiveness, privacy, and financial security.”