Challenge #1: My Favorite Cryptocurrency – How Can We Get Businesses to Accept it as Payment?

I live in Honduras, which to my understanding is one of the least crypto aware countries in the world. Working with crypto here is not as easy as in other countries not because of government intervention but because it is not too well known, I personally know of no business that accepts crypto. Surprisingly the other day I went to a Chinese restaurant for some take out and there , on the restaurants outer wall was a propaganda sheet of paper saying that they accepted Bitcoin, Ether and some other coins for their services. Unfortunately the only information was a cell phone number, it didn't even say what business they were in so I don't know if it is legit or maybe a scam. I guess more people in this country are getting into crypto this year. I was in one crypto Whatsapp group but I quit because of too much spam, this group was just for Honduras.

Personally I have been involved with crypto for quite a while now, but have never invested any money in it just my time. Due to what I have told you about my country I was unable to find any viable way to change crypto into our currency, but eventually I found localbitcoins dot com and there I was able to sell my Bitcoin when I needed some cash. Of course I had to change my crypto to Bitcoin, I have had to exchange Steem, Hive, 1UP, Vitae into BTC several times to get cash. This worked quite well I sold my BTC for cash and received the money in Lempiras (our Currency) via Moneygram or Western Union.

Then one day I found a guy in Honduras who actually buys Bitcoin, I contacted him and now whenever I need some money I exchange whatever crypto I have into BTC and contact this guy. It is much easier, if he wants it I sent the BTC to his wallet and he sends my money to my bank account. This is less trouble and also the bank does not take a cut as happens with money transfer companies.

I have used several exchanges for my crypto exchanges into Bitcoin, including Blocktrades, Probit and Ionomy, actually all of them have been a good experience for me, no complaints there, what they are supposed to do they did and I am completely satisfied with them. Of course I would rather have a national exchange inside the country for my crypto but I don't see this happening any time soon. As you can see Bitcoin is my favorite Crypto currency as it is the only one I have been able to exchange for cash.

As for businesses accepting Bitcoin or other crypto in this country, well I guess first we would need more saturation of crypto enthusiasts, I guess time will bring this, I personally have talked with a lot of friends and they are interested but most are unwilling to invest because of the risk, if we had more success stories going around I believe more people would be interested in this. Of course I have tried to raise interest in Steem but the people I have onboarded just became disappointed easily, despite me showing them proof that this does work.

Well I guess we will be seeing crypto explode in this country in the near future, I am sure that if not for the pandemic we would already be far more advanced than we are now.