Cacao 

Cacao Embassy: Building Premium Exports in a Low-Trust Market

A Real Challenge

Pablo M., Founder of Cacao Embassy, has a clear vision: he wants to move Guatemalan cacao exports up from a bulk commodity into premium specialty exports, like wine or coffee. A world-class product can pay farmers better prices and leaves more profit. But in the real economy of rural Guatemala, access to trade finance is hard. Poverty resulted in a low trust culture. ‘Coyotes’, local middlemen, control liquidity, and buy up entire harvests on the cheap, leaving little margin for local farmers or value-added producers.

The Bitcredit Solution

Bitcredit is a Bitcoin-native trade finance protocol. With a simple app, cacao farmers, cooperatives, SMEs, and traders like Pablo can arrange trade finance peer-to-peer, without banks.

Now, when Pablo finds a buyer, the trade can move smoothly through the supply chain. The coop pays the farmer with an e-bill upon delivery, a Bitcredit mint splits the e-bill into e-cash for instant payments of wages and expenses. This repeats at every production stage: buyers pay with e-bills, sellers use e-cash to pay prior stages, cover wages, expenses, and keep a good profit.

Pablo can now pay better than the coyotes, farmers can use the extra margin to specialise and deliver premium cacao, foreign markets get better chocolate. Who would not like that? Each trade builds a verifiable credit history on Bitcoin mainchain. And new trust within the business partner network builds up in time.