MÉRIDA, Yucatán — October 22, 2025 — PlebLab, the founder-run Bitcoin accelerator based in Austin, Texas, brought its sixth Startup Day program to Mérida on October 9th–10th in partnership with Yopaki.
The program drew national attention, including a Televisa segment featuring Francisco Chavarría, Co-Founder and CEO of Yopaki, and live coverage from Reporte Índigo that kicked off Thursday’s sessions.
Startup Day Yucatán gathered founders, developers, engineers, investors, and public-sector leaders for two days of talks, live demos, and on-the-ground merchant adoption across Centro.
The Director of Economy and Industry of Yucatán participated alongside local leaders. Programming centered at White Paper House, a new community space that will host ongoing builder activity in Mérida.
“Startup Day is a working sprint. We want builders shipping, merchants trying new products, and communities keeping value moving locally,” said Car, Co-Founder and CEO of PlebLab. “Mérida showed up. White Paper House gives this new momentum a home.”
“Yopaki is focused on making Bitcoin payments fast and easy across Mexico and LATAM,” said Francisco Chavarría, Co-Founder and CEO of Yopaki.
“With the launch of Terminal we’ve been working to improve the quality of our entire stack offering, using bitcoin as money and to find a way to bring it to millions of customers.”
Program Highlights
White Paper House Launch and Packed Sessions
The venue hosted the orange-ribbon kickoff, builder talks, and discussions with strong local turnout, plus national and regional media attention.
Yopaki Mérida Real-World Usage
Yopaki deployed its new terminal product with local businesses in Mérida during the week and announced new partner initiatives. Products were tested throughout the event with immediate feedback from the community.
Bitcoin Startup Announcements
Shockwallet introduced CLINK, a Nostr-native standard for secure, self-custodial Lightning interactions with no web servers.
CASCDR announced work on CASCADE 1 Architecture, a self-custodied evolution of its platform. RUNSTR unveiled a new app featuring zap challenges and peer-to-peer functionality. Feed Filter previewed its upcoming mobile app slated to ship around the holidays.
Time2Build Kickoff
PlebLab co-launched the worldwide Breez builder challenge from the Yucatán, with follow-ups planned during the November merge window and beyond in Austin.
Featured Talks Recap
On stage, “Realtime Building on AI and Bitcoin” showed how inference, embeddings, and agentic workflows pair with Lightning for usage-based pricing;
“Unpacking the Lightning Builder Playbook” turned abstractions into reference flows discussing tools like the Breez SDK with a focus on uptime and real-world UX;
“The Anatomy of a Bitcoin Hub” distilled the ingredients of durable ecosystems from Tokyo to Tampa Bay, emphasizing cadence, builder rituals, and a loop into growth;
and “Mexico and LATAM Bitcoin Strategy” grounded the week in city-level wins measured by activated merchants and recurring payments.
Additional sessions framed the legal landscape with Carlos Peniche and Juan Lemus of IBEX, connected classroom learning to merchant flows with Quentin from Mi Primer Bitcoin, explored tourism and real-estate use cases with Raúl of CIGNO, compared global hub patterns with Lisa of Tokyo Bitcoin Base and Fulgur Ventures.
We even dug into resilient grassroots communities with Jimi, Daniel, and Mercedes before closing with what is next for the White Paper House.
Why It Matters
The week produced a practical playbook for Mérida: ship in public, test with merchants, measure reliability, then scale from a consistent hub.
Anchored at White Paper House, this model speeds up learning cycles, compounds community capacity, and moves traction that local teams and businesses can run again and again.
Contact
PlebLab
[email protected]
About PlebLab
PlebLab is a community accelerator and hackerspace based in Austin, Texas. Since 2021, we have supported early-stage Bitcoin founders through hands-on mentorship, programs like Startup School and Top Builder, and a global network of builders, operators, investors, and open-source contributors.
About Yopaki
Yopaki is a Mexico-based Bitcoin company focused on financial sovereignty for Latin America. The team is building modern tools for saving and transacting in Bitcoin while supporting education and community across the region.
