EspañolOn Tuesday, the Eléutera Foundation announced an alliance with bitcoin exchange platform provider Mimetics Markets (M2), a move that will create the first open cryptocurrency market in Honduras.

“If you’d like to expose your local market to bitcoin and launch a bitcoin exchange, you no longer have to hire a platform provider and spend months working on a custom integration for your local market,” explains Sameer Parekh Brenn, CEO of Mimetic Markets. “Now you can have your exchange up and running within minutes, using our Sputnik Exchange Engine platform.”

“M2 is exactly what we needed to jump start this initiative that is already attracting the attention of a lot of people,” said Guillermo Peña, executive director of Eléutera Foundation. “Our objective to officially launch an exchange market for cryptocurrencies and other commodities will soon become reality.”

Post by Fundación Eléutera “The new service will enable operators to immediately create a bitcoin exchange that is robust, scalable, serving cash, futures, and futures markets.”

With this initiative, the foundation seeks to expand the use of bitcoin in Honduras to facilitate the mobility of capital and provide an alternative to the Honduran lempira, the national currency with the highest rate of inflation in Central America.

As of September, Honduras registered an accumulated inflation rate of 5.4 percent, and given the rapid devaluation of the limpera against the US dollar, the country faces difficult economic times. However, the Honduran economy could catch a break by shifting monetary markets, and bitcoin can be a reliable and effective currency alternative as demonstrated in countries such as Argentina.

“The Eléutera Foundation will continue disseminating knowledge about financing systems that allow for greater ease and security in the free movement of goods and capital, with the intention of better utilizing financial conditions for economic improvement on all levels of Honduran society,” reads a statement on the foundation’s website.

Breaking the State Monopoly on Money

Bitcoin is a decentralized, finite currency that has neither a distributor nor a central administrator. As a result, it is not subject to inflation and cannot be manipulated by issuing bonds or increasing the money supply like government-controlled currencies. In fact, it is precisely this sort of state interference that cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin seek to bypass; they were designed to break the state monopoly on money.