Valle de Ángeles, located in the Francisco Morazán department of Honduras, has begun using Bitcoin as a means of payment, becoming the second municipality in the country to officially use the cryptocurrency.
The mayor of the Honduran municipality of Valle de Ángeles, Wilfredo Ponce, He reported that his municipality is making all the necessary preparations for implement Bitcoin payments in several of its stores and businesses, in order to provide residents and tourists with the experience of paying with the most capitalized cryptocurrency on the market.
According to what Ponce told the local newspaper La Prensa, the municipality has been training merchants and entrepreneurs in the region to start a pilot test of Bitcoin payments. This test, which will be carried out in collaboration with cryptocurrency organizations Decentral Academy and Blockchain Honduras, will help local merchants enter the new digital economy.
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How is Valle de Ángeles adopting Bitcoin payments?
Although Bitcoin has spread throughout the world since its creation, disrupting almost every industry, the initiative being developed in the Valle de Ángeles municipality of Honduras is just one example of how governments are turning their attention to this digital and financial innovation.
Although businesses and shops located in the Honduran municipality will not receive bitcoins directly, the initiative promoted by the local government will give tourists in the region the possibility of using their BTC to pay for services and acquire goods and products locally.
Mayor Wilfredo Ponce clarified that Valle de Ángeles is not seeing Bitcoin as legal tender, but rather as a form of digital money that can help the municipality increase its tourist appeal. Under this measure, Bitcoin payments will be enabled in restaurants, hotels, craft businesses and more.
Santa Lucía was the first municipality in Honduras to accept Bitcoin payments
Valle de Ángeles is not the first municipality in Honduras to implement Bitcoin payments. In fact, the official website of Santa Lucía, a municipality located in the department of Tegucigalpa, presents itself as the first in the country to make official the use of Bitcoin as a means of payment.
The town noted that several entrepreneurs from the municipality made Santa Lucía the fourth region in Latin America to accept the new cryptocurrency payment method. Currently, around 60 shops and businesses accept BTC payments in the Honduran municipality.
On the other hand, the private charter city of Próspera, located on the island of Roatan, has been making use of Bitcoin since April of this year. As reported by this media, the president of Honduras Próspera Inc., Joel Bomgar, confirmed that local merchants and entrepreneurs in the city are actively using the cryptocurrency to make transactions, business payments, tax payments, and more.
The trend of Bitcoin payments is growing
Currently, other cities in the world, such as Rio de Janeiro (Brazil), the canton of Zug and Lugano (Switzerland), Madeira (Portugal), Lake Atitlán (Guatemala) and Puntarenas (Costa Rica), are using cryptocurrencies in payments. In El Salvador, the first country to announce the implementation of Bitcoin as legal tender, the government is designing what will be the world's first bitcoin city, called bitcoin cityIn this, El Salvador plans to accelerate its technological development and promote hyperbitcoinization.
In addition to this, companies such as Gucci and Balenciaga in the fashion industry, as well as Elektra, Farfetch, McDonalds, Starbucks, Pizza Hut and many others are now accepting payments with Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. Sports teams, real estate companies and luxury houses are also among those that have immersed themselves in the new digital economy, starting to make use of crypto assets as a means of payment.
Last April, financial multinational Morgan Stanley noted that partnerships between the Lightning Network, a second-layer network based on the Bitcoin blockchain, and various physical stores will further boost the use of BTC as a global payment method.
Continue reading: Morgan Stanley believes Bitcoin will grow as a payment method
