Money Code
The future of finance is digital. Welcome to Money Code, the show that decodes stablecoins and the evolution of programmable money for builders, investors, and decision-makers. Each week, join hosts Chuk Okpalugo, Author of Stablecoin Blueprint and Raj Parekh, Head of Payments/Stablecoins at Monad Foundation as they break down the systems and strategies of seasoned operators in the space, revealing the insights you need for better build and buy decisions.
Money Code
How Stablecoins Scaled Cross-Border Payments to $80B w/ Daniel Vogel (Bitso)
Presented by Stablecon; Powered by BVNK.
In episode 13 of Money Code, hosts Chuk Okpalugo and Raj Parekh sit down with Daniel Vogel, CEO and Co-Founder of Bitso.
Daniel explains how stablecoins have quietly become core cross-border payment infrastructure in Latin America, how Bitso scaled to over $80B in annualized volume, and why local-currency stablecoins like MXNB and BRL1 are less about speculation and more about moving finance onchain.
About Stablecon
Stablecon (https://stablecon.com/) is the premier gathering for those at the intersection of DeFi, economic policy, financial infrastructure, and institutional integration, and those reinventing global commerce.
By convening the brightest minds in fintech and crypto, Stablecon provides attendees with world class thought leadership and fosters unparalleled networking and strategic collaboration across the digital payments industry. Whether you’re building, advising, or navigating this new frontier, this is the room where it happens.
About BVNK
BVNK is the leading provider of stablecoin payments infrastructure, helping businesses move money faster, settle globally, and even launch their own stablecoin products. Head to https://bvnk.com/ to learn more.
Connect with the Hosts & Guest
Chuk Okpalugo: LinkedIn, X, stablecoinblueprint.com
Raj Parekh: LinkedIn, X, monad.xyz
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The future is a future where more and more financial services are going to be served on chain and where the tokenization of assets is just something that will continue to grow. And we believe that you know people will still want to get pri things priced in their local currencies. And so we want to make sure that there's basic building blocks for the DeFi on-chain world that is in tune with kind of like consumer expectations, at least in the geographies where we where we work. And so an example of this is you know, we obviously have companies in Mexico or institutions in Mexico that offer credit, they offer credit to you in Mexican pesos. And you know, people earn in Mexican pesos and then they want to repay their loans in Mexican pesos. And so we just want we would just expect you know at some point to be able to for for more people to want to get on-chain loans, but to want to get those on-chain loans in MXN peso, in MXN, right? MXN denominated. And so for that you need like a an MXN um stable coin.
Chuk Okpalugo:This is MoneyCode. It's a show where we decode stable coins and programmable money. I'm Chuck Okpalugo, your host and author of Stablecoin Blueprint, and I'm here with my co-host Raj Parekh, head of stablecoins and payments at Monad. Today we're gonna get into what it takes to scale stablecoins in a cross-border payment market landscape and the ecosystem at large. We're joined today by Daniel Vogel, co-founder and CEO of Bitso. Bitso is the first crypto unicorn and lands in America, but more importantly, they now handle 10% of all US to Mexico remittances. It's a clear sign that stablecoins have already moved from speculation to essential infrastructure. And as they explore local countries stablecoins for the Mexican peso and the Brazilian Real, Bitso is betting that the opportunity lies in cross-border utility. So if you're looking to understand the realities of stablecoins' role in the future of cross-border payments, Daniel is the person to go to. Dan, thanks so much for joining the show. How are you?
Daniel Vogel:Chuck Raj, very good. Very happy to be here. Thank you for having me and excited to tell you a little bit more about what we are doing.
Chuk Okpalugo:Excellent. So before we dive in, a quick note. Money code is brought to you by Stablecon Media and powered by BBNK. The views and opinions of the host and guests are their own and may not represent their companies. Nothing we discussed today constitutes investment advice or any other form of a dvice. Okay, let's dive in.
Raj Parekh:All right. Um well, first off, excited for you to be here. Um, you know, Bitso has been, in my opinion, one of the most important companies across, you know, Latam and, you know, you know, you know, vocal. We've always had a chance to work together for for many years now, but maybe describe just what is BitSo today? How did we get here? Because I think it's a really, really interesting story um with a lot of different uh paths, and and I think you know, you guys have been around for I think almost a decade at this point, too.
Daniel Vogel:You know, I I'm originally from Mexico. I was living in San Francisco, and a friend of mine told me about Bitcoin. This must have been about 2010. I went back home and I kind of like read up on Bitcoin, and I was just fascinated. Like, what what is money and you know who who gets to decide how much it's printed? And I used to always love working late at night, and the guy who was basically the clean cleaning staff at the company where I was working for in San Francisco was also for Mexico. So we would just talk about like whatever, whether it was the World Cup, uh, whether it was Mexican elections, whatever it is, we just connect on anything Mexico related. His name is Julio, and Julio won they just asked me for money. Um, hey man, would you spot me 300 bucks and I'll pay you at the end of the week? I was like, sure, Julio. Uh, but I've known you for you know for a number of years now and you've never asked me money for money. Is uh is everything okay? And the guy just said, like, look, I need to send money back home, and there's a very big fixed cost. And so my daughter needs some school utensils pretty urgently. And if I send her what I have, uh a big portion of what I send will be eaten by the fixed fee. But if you lend me the money, I'll get paid in a few days and I'll pay you back. And even though by this point I'd already been in the US for maybe like seven years, um like I'd never really understood kind of like the pains of remittances and how expensive they were. And and I just found it fascinating that you know you could press a button and you could basically FaceTime anyone or video chat anyone, but basically at no cost. But that moving money across borders um was very expensive. And my two co-founders of Bitso, uh Ben and Pablo, they were also individuals who were not living in their home country. And I think the three of us just kind of like were fascinated by this idea of Bitcoin as a mechanism to move money between borders. Um, and so a big part of the impetus of starting Bitso was actually to like move money across borders. We need to replace Swift and correspondent banking and all these really old infrastructure and just build out new infrastructure. And we thought Bitcoin was going to be the answer. And in fact, before starting the company, I actually tried to build a different company that was going to send remittances from the US to Mexico via Bitcoin. And and but there was no way to make those Bitcoins liquid in Mexico for pesos. So people would receive them and they'd be like, How do I buy medicine and how do I pay for you know uh utilities with this thing? And um, and that's what made BitSo as an exchange, which was kind of like the very first product that we launched, very obvious. We just needed a mechanism to make Bitcoin liquid um with Mexican pesos. We were definitely one of the first people to actually really start moving money between the US and Mexico um at scale using Bitcoin. And so then our second product was we had a lot of customers who wanted to invest in Bitcoin or in crypto in general, but the notion of the order book was just a little bit too complex. And we just built a broker, which we thought was just gonna be an easier experience. All mobile, come here, we'll give you a price and just buy in and sell whatever cryptocurrency you wanted. And so that was, I guess, a kind of our second product, and in many ways, it's still the largest product that we have from a revenue perspective. But then our ambitions was always to build like this cross-border stuff, and so we just kept trying and trying, and we tried many different things, and it really wasn't until kind of like stable coins got to a specific critical mass where we were able to really start growing the infrastructure to really like finally do that original vision that we have to just replace the correspondent banking and cross-border money movement rails that have existed for a long time but were slow and inefficient and only work during specific times. And um, and we just started to basically move money uh between countries using stable coins, using USDC, USDT, and that has grown. And so even though we we do about 10% of the remittances between the US and Mexico, uh there's about $60 billion that flow from the US to Mexico every year, and we do about 10% of that. But our TPV right now as an as a company on cross-border payment stuff is um is close to $80 billion a year. And so it's larger than the remittance corridor. And now we power a bunch of other stuff. Uh, companies who are trying to make payments, individuals who are trying to make cross-border payments, we obviously do a bunch of the remittance stuff. Um, and you know, we handle treasuries for for corporates. Uh, and basically, like BitSo has kind of like started to become what what we call kind of like the largest digital asset infrastructure provider in LATAM. We allow companies to build on top of us, everything's built on APIs, and we have also end customers. We believe that money should just be digital, it should be programmable, it should live on on a blockchain, and um, and we want to make sure that we connect the banking rails of Latin America with the crypto rails that are global to be able to basically facilitate uh facilitate these cross-border transactions between individuals, businesses, um, and across countries. But we still have a fairly large business that is basically the brokerage, where stablecoins also important because a lot of our customers just want to buy dollars and access to dollars in Latin is a big business. But um, but it's more of a like an investment or savings app, whereas what we've been building on the on the B2B side is more like really infrastructure to do these payments at scale, both uh from a liquidity perspective and then from a payout and pay-in perspective.
Chuk Okpalugo:That's fascinating. Uh it's incredible to hear the story. And uh I think it's really interesting how the original version was cross-border payments. And I think that it's actually similar to many other companies in the crypto space. Circle, for example, everyone knows Circle as a uh stablecoin, it were. My first interaction with Circle was they had an app. It was a consumer app for cross-border payments. It was a global Venmo. And I was telling all my friends to get it, and I was like, guys, this is the solution, this is how it works. And they kind of shut that down and then pivoted a couple of times, and now it's who they are. But uh so many people in the space were brought by the initial Bitcoin solution that that promised. Um but it's taken us many different places and times to get there, and stable clients are part of the solution. So I want to dig into one of the things you mentioned. Uh I guess two things. One was um you were trying all these different things, and it just it just took some time before the market was there. And uh how what lessons that hold for other corridors where you know you kind of need to wait for liquidity, you kind of need to wait for some critical mass. And then maybe after that you can kind of break down an 80 billion of annualized TPV, how much is remittance, how much is cross-border, which corridors, just to give everyone an understanding of like how scaled you guys are at this point.
Daniel Vogel:Yeah. Um, so it's kind of it's kind of funny to hear you say, you know, you were trying all this stuff because we really were trying all this stuff, right? And uh and it was interesting. We always found, we were always able to find like a few set of customers who were very intrigued by this. Like I feel like there's people around the world who were paying who've been paying attention for a long time and who were kind of like willing to be part of that journey, you know. And so, like from remittance companies all the way to very traditional companies who've been customers of ours for, you know, by now, like Raj said, like basically a decade. And um but a lot of other stuff just wasn't there, like the liquidity wasn't there, the technology wasn't there, the um, you know, even the regulatory stuff, uh, you know, you could still argue that part of that is still not even there today, uh, to really just kind of like really unlock the full potential um of what we think is going to happen, but like we we still feel like there's a little bit more regulatory clarity that that is needed. So, like I guess some lessons along the way is like you could you can have a lot of fun, but if this would have been our sole business, we would have been out of business for a really long time. Like we were very lucky that crypto as an asset class grew and that we had the investment side on on the retail product because that broker like really have funded a lot of the RD and a lot of the patience that we've had to have on the cross-border side, you know. The second thing that I would say is that you know, we were this kind of like company in Mexico, and we had all these US companies that we were looking up to. And um and I guess like another lesson was like it doesn't matter who you are or where you are, like you can still innovate and you can still be like pioneers. And we you know, there were times that we're like, oh, maybe we should just like grab the playbook of one of these players that's being successful and just copy it, right? Um and that's has worked for a lot of companies in like across the world. I mean, we've seen the Uber competitors that then get bought by Uber or the whatever, right? Like this happened in a bunch of industries, and like the largest tech company in LATAM, which is Mercado Libre, if you talk to the founders, we have uh, you know, um Nico Sakasi is in our board, and he's told me a lot about the early days at Mercado Libre, but it was basically like a copy of eBay, right? And then it became you know a very large competitor to Amazon in the region. But um, so so you can build very successful businesses like that. But we also feel quite proud that we kind of like um innovated a lot in this space, in the cross-border space, uh, just by the sheer kind of will of trying and retrying and retrying and um and just having a lot of fun while doing that. But we would have never been able to do that had we not had like something that was actually paying the bills and bringing in money and had a growth story. The next thing that I would say is that at least when it comes to innovating in financial services, I think you need to get very comfortable with innovating in slightly gray zones. Yeah, I think like one of the things that we did at Bitso is we had very clear things that we never wanted to do, right? Like we never wanted to do, you know, deal with nefarious actors or with actors that were using our platform for questionable um purposes. But that doesn't mean that even if you have like a very legitimate client that you can fully build out a fully regulated with full regulatory clarity solution on the get-go because regulators was they don't have an incentive to regulate something that might become important, right? Like they'll they will play catch-up. That's just in in any industry that's true, but financial services is so regulated that it's uh it's tricky, it's extra tricky to build here because you need to learn how to kind of you know create the space where you can have enough compliance um or be following kind of like the spirit of the law with enough conviction that if someone asks questions, you have very good answers, but where you can actually start, we can, but you can where we can actually be innovating. So that's been a lot of fun. We've had a lot of fun doing that, very stressful at times, but also always really interesting. How do you negotiate with regulators, how do you position yourself, etc. etc., which is still true to this day. Um and then, like, and then the and then the last lesson I would say, at least the last lesson that comes to mind is that the team is really important. A lot of the innovation, like a lot of the vision, you know, kind of came from me and Ben and Pablo as founders, but a lot of the really awesome stuff that like we've developed as a as a company has come from the team, right? Like people who you get to really buy into your vision, get really excited about what you're doing, and who can really you know be showering and thinking, how am I going to make this better? And a lot of the really awesome innovation comes from those from those folks. And so um, you know, just very grateful for the people who've been part of the Bit So journey for um, you know, at any point, but definitely the ones who have been there for a really long time, very, very grateful for them. In terms of like the 80 billion of TPB, so our largest operation continues to be Mexico. Um, and so in terms of um, in terms of that volume, Mexico is the majority, then it's followed by Brazil, then Colombia, and then Argentina from a B2B perspective. Our retail business is slightly different. Um, like in our retail business, Mexico is also the biggest, but Argentina is number two. Um and um and the majority of the flow today is basically PSPs, and so these are companies that sell solutions to uh merchants and customers, etc., to basically process payments, but then they also help these companies move the money in or out of a country, and what we found is that these particular companies are pretty badly served by the TratFi world, and you can they can become really competitive if they can basically figure out mechanisms to hand the money they collect on behalf of their merchants to the merchants quicker. And before you had they had to wait a bunch of time, right? Because you would collect a bunch of money and you would let that money sit or accumulate until it got to a certain mass, and then you would basically like you know do the FX conversion and then wait a few days for that to clear through the traditional banking system, and the and then you would deliver it to your merchants. And and now basically, like we have merchants that every single payment that gets collected basically gets converted into USDC or USDT or some stable coin and just gets shipped directly sometimes to the to the merchant, sends the commission of the PSP. And so it's kind of like really starting to change um PSPs, but PSPs has grown significantly for us. Um remittances has been a little bit of a mixed story, like we grow at times and then we shrink, and and and what what happens is like remittances are is is is such a competitive game where margins on FX really, really matter that we I think the the flow that we have is really interesting because these remittance companies have um you know high capital cost constraints or happy high capital high working capital costs, sorry, um because they need to pre-fund these accounts. And so these remitters like go and they make a part where they they enter into a partnership with a payout company in Mexico, but the payout company is happy to do the payments for them and charge them as long as they have money sitting in the account. But if it's like a you know, um if if a trend if an international transfer takes one business day, um that means that you need to send money on a Thursday to front your operations for Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, and you need to have basically three full working days of working capital, and sometimes big important holidays or days happen on a weekend. And so then these companies were like really struggling with just the high cost of all the working capital they had to put in. And our solution is 24-7, and so they love it, and they love it for overnight for like nights and weekends, because they basically can lower the amount that they keep at these payout partners, and they can just top them up whenever um whenever they need to. Um and and the solution is very simple, right? Like the solution is they have dollars in a bank account in the US. There's a bunch of providers in the US that will receive dollars and turn them into a stable coin, send over the stablecoin at Bitzo. Bitzo gives them uh good pricing on liquidity, they turn that into MXN, and then we can send that to anyone, whether it's the end customer that's receiving in their bank account or like a payout partner that needs to receive that um, you know, in their account in order to continue to make payments. And so uh just to answer your question from from the 80 billion that I quoted, I would say probably 75% is Mexico. And out of that 75%, um I'll tell you in just a second, but out of that 75%, I would say about 10% of that is in the remittance business. And the and and and and the rest is a combination of um you know PSPs and corporates that are basically using this for um you know to just basically move move money between between countries.
Chuk Okpalugo:That's fascinating. I think uh many people just assume it's mostly remittance uh and don't don't really have a good understanding of the B2B side, but those B2B flows are enormous. That's huge.
Daniel Vogel:Yeah, no, and they've been growing pretty significantly um over the last year. I think I think the stable coin story has been a very powerful one in 2025, and we see small, medium, and large enterprises who are all curious, and we see different levels of engagement. But I mean we've seen, I mean, Raj will know this well, but like, you know, the the large payment networks, Visa and MasterCard, thinking really hard about how do I how do I make of stable coins an opportunity for our for our business and you know remittance companies and corporates. So like we see a lot, there's still a lot to be done. I think one of the biggest issues that we still see today is um just like tax. Like there's still like a little bit of uncertainty uh with respect to like Mexican tax code, for example, on how do you really treat a stable coin. Um I think as those things get cleared up, like the the solution is just so much better, so much faster, you know, that um that our sense is that just more and more and more people will will just continue to get on boarded and over the next 10 years, like we're gonna forget about correspondent banking and all that crazy stuff.
Raj Parekh:Yeah, no, it's it's bold. I mean, and also like I mean, appreciate you breaking down to 80 billion in TPV. I mean, that's uh that's that's pretty massive as well. And it seems like and you guys obviously haven't stopped there. I mean, you guys have also released your own stable coins too. So you have MXNB, you have BRL one, which is the consortium uh in Brazil as well. But maybe describe just like the motivation of saying, okay, we've seen this business grow. We're seeing like the the flows and volumes kind of stack in you know multiple different directions. We know that you guys have a strong foothold in Mexico, but what then led to, hey, we should actually release MXNB. And oh, you know, what what are you seeing so far in terms of use cases and interest for it too?
Daniel Vogel:Yeah, so when we see like the USD stable coins, right, like we see them fulfilling some important customer needs. So I'll talk about some. Like, as I mentioned, people in Latin America, in depending on where you are, it might be easier or harder to get access to a US dollar bank account. And some of these stable coins just like make it very easy, right? Like as long as you have access to a place like Pizza, you can very basically very easily onboard into um into stable coins. And so that's exciting. The second thing is we're seeing stable coins be like a important really important building block of the DeFi world, right? Like everything that has to do with exchanges, on on-chain exchanges, um getting loans, collateralized loans, like all the stuff that's happening on the kind of like on-chain world, USD stable coins are a really, really important building block for that. And then the third thing that we that we see a lot is what I was just talking about, like all all the things the incremental kind of cross-border slash settlement flows, whether you're settling a credit card with Visa or whether you are, you know, send settling a remittance with Pizo using a stable a USD stable coin. And so kind of like as we start to think about like the future, right? Like we don't think that uh you know there's going to be a big appetite for, let's say, Americans to hold MXN, the same way that there's an appetite of Mexicans to hold USD, right? Like Mexicans have been holding USD forever. Um very few Americans hold MXN, right? So like that kind of like use case we don't think necessarily really applies for MXMB or BRL1. However, the other two we find very interesting, right? Like we are firm believers of the on-chain economy. We believe that the future is a future where more and more financial services are going to be served on-chain and where the tokenization of assets is just something that will continue to grow. And we believe that you know, people will still want to get things priced in their local currencies, and so we want to make sure that there's basic building blocks for the DeFi on-chain world that is uh in tune with kind of like consumer expectations, at least in the geographies where we where we work. And so an example of this is uh, you know, we obviously have companies in Mexico or institutions in Mexico that offer credit, they offer credit to you in Mexican pesos, and uh you know, people earn in Mexican pesos and then they want to repay their loans in Mexican pesos, and so we just want we would just expect you know at some point to be able to for for more people to want to get on-chain loans, but to want to get those on-chain loans in MXN peso, in MXN, right? MXN denominated. And so for that you need like a an MXN um stable coin. But then as we think about this kind of like cross-border payment space, we also think that over time more and more of the liquidity is just going to move on-chain, and we believe that because there's real benefits to just having pricing on-chain and ethics on chain and settlement on-chain, and so you know, if if if for some of the audience this is like a little bit difficult, you can just kind of like think about it as you know, you you used to have kind of like these local magazines that would cover stuff, um events and whatnot, and then the internet came, and then there was like these global venues where we cover, you know, information and events, etc. And like it changed forever media in Mexico. When I was a younger kid, I would basically the media I had access to was whatever the Mexican media decided that was worth showing me. When the internet showed up, I suddenly could access information from all over the world. I always use the example that my favorite band is Radiohead, and there was never anything in Mexican media about like Radiohead. And the internet came up and I was able to connect with like-minded individuals all over the world and really learn a lot about Radiohead, and it was amazing. And I feel the same thing is going to basically happen with um with all these on-chain stuff, on-chain being another analogy or another concept similar to the internet, but you can think about it, it's just going to bring financial services or solutions or products to everyone, and you're gonna be able to access a loan on-chain that is going to be more competitive than what your local bank would offer you, and you're gonna be able to basically do that on this technology. And so when we think about FX, we really feel like at the end of the world, at the end of the day, liquidity will be get liquidity, and so you will want to have more liquidity in these pools that are going to be more visible, more transparent, more discoverable, and that needs to be in an on-chain venue. Um and so MXMB and BRL1 become really important building blocks. And by the way, there's already a really interesting amount of activity for MXMB on-chain and for BRL1 as well, um, particularly on Ave, not Onave, on Avalanche. Um and then, and then the last thing is like, you know, what when I moved to Mexico, I mean I moved back to Mexico, so I'm from Mexico, but then I spent 10 years in the US, and then I moved back to Mexico. And um, and when I moved back, there was this new system, this new payment system called Spay, which is the system that connects banks and financial institutions in the country. And I thought it was kind of cool, like, oh, you you enter this number and um and you make a payment. And then I was like, when we were starting Bit So, we're like, oh, we should become a participant of Spay. And that journey took us like seven years to basically get to maybe not seven, but no, yeah, probably seven years to to basically do it. Um and the amount of innovation that's happening on Spay, it's minimal because it's such an important part of infrastructure of the run by the central bank, very regulated, very difficult to be a participant, very expensive. We were actually talking to a bank recently who's like, I don't want to be a participant of Spay anymore, I'm going to offload that to a third party. But my point, the point that I'm trying to make there is that I feel like it's very difficult to innovate even in local payment systems, payment rails. And I want to believe that there's going to be a really interesting set of innovation that'll happen with local stable coins where uh as it relates to kind of like local payments. And the reason why I feel that is because right now you have like uh explosion of fintechs in Mexico, but they all have to have this really difficult moment connecting to the space system through third parties and whatnot. And I feel like if there was like an easy tech-enabled solution on-chain that we're trying to obviously build with MXMB, um we would just basically start seeing a lot of innovation there where people are going to start thinking, well, I no longer need to go through this like super hard and difficult um system to get on board it, but I can basically innovate on top of like a stablecoin. And I think we're going to see cool stuff um for local payments um as well, with new experiences that today cannot get built on top of Spay, but could get built on top of um on top of these uh local local stables. And so that's kind of like our vision. We we believe that payments will just need like any other asset, local currencies will need to be tokenized. That will make them play a very important role in the DeFi world. And um and we believe that new use cases will emerge as more and more companies kind of like start playing with the idea of, oh, maybe I can just use a stablecoin as opposed to these archaic, really complex systems.
Chuk Okpalugo:That's really helpful to hear. And it almost is a parallel of earlier in the pitfall's life where you were very aware of the opportunity for Bitcoin and blockchain to facilitate cross-border. But you're trying all these different things to make it happen. Does it feel like you're in a female position where you can see the future is happening? But you're trying to do all these things. And what do you think is needed? Is it liquidity? Is it regulation? You know, what are the what are the ways to get that liquidity on chain or to get those markets of borrowing and lending of MXINB versus Bitcoin?
Daniel Vogel:Yeah, so uh you you hit it spot on chalk because it's kind of like the the end state is so obvious, but I have no idea how the hell we're gonna get there. And so we're just trying all these things, right? Like and and and and and actually I just had a meeting with my whole management team, and we're just literally talking strategy, and we're talking about like, you know, the we have these products that we know that there's demand for them today, and then we have these ideas that we know that that's how the future is going to work. And how do you basically run a company that allows you to fund these longer, um you know, these longer initiatives, right? Um, because when when when what when when you fund them like and they're successful, or even if it takes you you know half a decade or a decade, like it it's very rewarding, right? Like that you were able to kind of like see the future and and not only see the future, but like you kind of had a you you were able to shape it, right? Because people have used the story of like the cross-border payments that Bitwav's done for a really long time. Like if you see um, well, I know we're gonna get into that, but some of the litigation that's happening in the US, like actually quotes as a as a as a real positive side of crypto, um this cross-border stuff that we were doing. But um I guess I guess like the way the way that I think about it is you need to be I think you need to be very stubborn with the vision, but then you need to be very flexible on the details. And I'm pretty sure someone else that's smarter than I am said that already. And so I'm just copying, I forgot who it was. But um, but it's something that I really, really take to heart at at at Bitso, because as I mentioned before, some of the real breakthroughs happened when the team was just innovating by themselves. And um, and I'm kind of hoping that the same thing happens here, where some of the things that are the big blockers today, like regulatory liquidity, even just frankly speaking, technically, right? Like now we have now we live in this world where like we've created hundreds of chains and bunch of layer twos, and as opposed to uh liquidity be getting liquidity, we're fragmenting liquidity, and that has its own set of issues. And so, like, as an industry, we're also going through the um Cambrian explosion of ideas, but uh a lot of them just need to die, right? Like a lot of them, just frankly speaking, I mean, just survival of the fittest. Many of them just can cannot survive, but they will not be able to survive. But but it's confusing. It's confusing building today uh in crypto because there's so many, you know, and you get approached by all these players, like, oh, release MXMB on my chain and I'll give you X or I'll give you Y. And so you do some of these things, but then they they don't really end up where you where you want them. But I guess I guess if I had to summarize, I think the three things are regulatory, where I think the US is leading the way as with genius and clarity, etc. But when it comes to cross-border flows, you would also depend on the other countries. Mexico, I think, did a very, very good job in 2018, and now it's been really lagging behind. The second place I think is liquidity. And liquidity is always this chicken and egg problem because we can inject a bunch of MXN liquidity, but if no one is using it, it just becomes very expensive to just have that liquidity sitting there. And so then, you know, you don't necessarily want that, but then the opposite is true. People go in and say, oh, well, there's no liquidity in this market, so I don't want to like to so you need to figure out these mechanisms to really kind of like get that flywheel started, no. Um, and so on that front, we're trying a bunch of stuff and partnering with a lot of really interesting companies and protocols, trying to basically get MXMB to just be you know more widely used and more liquidity. And then the last thing I would say um is the technology itself. I think blockchain technology has gotten significantly better, right? Like trying to do this with Bitcoin, very difficult, slow, volatile, etc. We did this with Ethereum for a long time, and then transaction costs got really high, but now they're kind of back, and now you have like the scalability of these layer twos. But then there's these questions around like privacy, there's questions around like, anyways, but I I feel like uh all of these things are gonna get sorted out, right? And um, and so I'm not not particularly worried. I was looking at this chart that someone um sent me that basically was showing the um the daily transactions per second in in the Ethereum ecosystem. It's just fascinating, right? Like Ethereum is doing close to 400 transactions um per second. And not long ago, we were thinking that it was impossible to think that this thing was going to even scale beyond seven or maybe 10 transactions per per second, and now we're doing 40 times that of actual volume, not even the this is not the limit of the network, it's just what's what's already happening on the network. And so um I always find those things so so like the technical aspects of uh of crypto so interesting because um we move very quickly, but there's still there's still a lot of work to be done.
Raj Parekh:Yeah, 100%. Um I mean like the inf the infrastructure has gotten so mature now where you can actually build some of these uh you know these payment systems and not have to worry about the unit economics as much or network congestion. Um, you know, some of the abstraction is also just getting much easier from a user experience standpoint, too. So it's it's very I'm not I'm very excited about like what's to come as well. But I'm also curious, uh Vogel, like for you, like there's we go we tend to go through these you know hype cycles in in crypto, and uh we we tend to see it a lot. And you know, stablecoins obviously had a a really big year recently. But do you do you are you seeing like the market uh is it is it too is it overhyped right now? Is it underhyped? Or uh are there things that are still like maybe still getting built uh kind of to your point that you're like still excited about? Like but curious to you know your point of view. There's there seems to be you know new companies that are popping up every single day now. Uh this consolidation also, but and the market's evolving very quickly. But curious to see like you know your point of view on it too.
Daniel Vogel:I mean, it's really exhausting building crypto, right? Because as you mentioned, like you go through these hype cycles where everything's super exciting and everyone's becoming like all their businesses are booming and everyone's making a lot of money, and then as fast as you got there, then you're like on the opposite side of the spectrum. This this you know, the narrative changes from crypto is gonna cure, is going to solve for world peace, to like, you know, you know, this is just a scam industry, right? And and and and you know, my my dad when I was younger, um I remember this really well. Like I graduated from college in 2009, but my dad came to visit me at the end of the school year in 2008, and I had a a roommate back then whose job who's going to become an investment banker, and whose job was kind of like in in in questionable standing because the great financial crisis that just happened, and all these banks like what made hires maybe the summer before suddenly weren't ready to like, you know, maybe commit to those offers. And my dad told this guy in front of me, he said, you know, just trying to make him feel better. He said, You know, like life is like a wheel of fortune. Sometimes you're on the top and you can't believe it, and you feel like you're the smartest person in the world, and sometimes you're at the bottom and you feel like you know you're the stupidest person, and blah blah blah. And my dad said, But it's that that's just life, man. It just you just go round and round. And and what you need to remember is that you're not as smart as you think you are when you're on the top, but when you're in the top, you should enjoy it because you're gonna for sure gonna come down. And equally, you're never as dumb as you feel you are when you're at the very bottom. And all you need to remember is that at some point it'll just go back up. And I've kind of like taken that, uh, I think it's Very um appropriate with the crypto industry. And I and I kind of like really try to think hard about that when as we run Bit So. And but but I will tell you that like yes, the market obviously gets hot and there's a lot of investments, and a bunch of companies and a bunch of those companies will fail. And some of those companies will be very successful. And we see some companies that are like you know growing very, very rapidly, but when you really dig into the unit economics, it's like this wasn't how is this going to become a business? And so that's kind of hard. Um, but my my my the I think that the the two lessons I think are important here are the following. One is that I welcome every dollar that gets poured into the crypto space because that's just another team trying something else, and um and and it's just like an opportunity to have a breakthrough, an opportunity to to innovate, to disrupt, etc. And then the other thing that I would say is that you know, in the same in the in the same vein, um valuations might get too hot or get get penalized a bunch or whatever, depending where you are on the hype cycle. But I still feel like we have not accomplished what we should accomplish. And so I feel like the the path forward is definitely going to be circuitious, definitely going to be difficult, but there's so much opportunity and there's so much upside. And and and there's so much to build that um you know, I think if you have the opportunity to kind of like build in this in this space, in this environment in this environment, I would I would absolutely be doing it and invest. Now the question is at what prices, where we are, etc. etc. But I feel like those are kind of like secondary. I I I want to believe that, you know, um even if if valuations are just a little high right now, the companies that will that that will end up kind of like figuring this out and winning are going to be worth multiples of what these current valuations are. And things that at times look expensive, I think, over time, you know, if they're successful, will will look very cheap, right? Um, I think that's true of anything, but I but I feel like it's it's very true for where we are in crypto because particularly when it has to do with kind of like disrupting the rails of the traditional financial sector or traditional financial system, there's just so much to do still. And the rails are never ending, right? Because we just talked about like correspondent banking, but there's rails in everything in the financial system, right? Like credit card acceptance and you know, and or or credit card processing and like local local rails, and then these global rails and the messaging systems and like settlement, you know, like when you buy a stock in Mexico, then you need to go in and settle with these depositary institutions. I don't know what the translation is in English, but uh like the the ability to just kind of like take flows and disrupt is just enormous, not ability. The the market for money movement is just so massive. And you look at what crypto is doing, and yes, it's grown a lot and it's exciting, and what and there's all these amazing metrics like you know the the the stablecoin TPV in 2024 surpassed that of Visa and MasterCard combined, and like we should be very proud and excited about that. But man, it's still a drop in the bucket when you look at what the TratFi world is really doing. And so I I just feel like if you execute well, it's just up from here.
Chuk Okpalugo:Yeah, absolutely. I I I think that's really well said. The opportunity when you break things down, as you mentioned, and you get into the weeds of what the customers who are coming to you are saying and just lived experience. Uh, one of the things that you said that really uh I was surprised by was even today, the the local market uh payment rail has issues. And yes, it's there, it exists, but the friction to develop is holding back the economy, is holding back innovation and stuff and so on. And if you can remove friction and allow people to bring together innovation, build on top of each other's products, i.e., compatibility, they need to move faster, uh move forward a lot faster. And so yes, I I think I can see why some folks get a little bit jaded because it seems like we've been doing this for over it has been over a decade, right? It's taken ages. But actually, I think now is the a moment where we are so, so, so close to like a breakout point. I think regulation is starting to trickle in. Yes, the hype is helpful sometimes because it allows you to think big, but we're seeing it happen. It's happening. You guys are part of the part in the middle of it, uh, and others are too. So um I'm excited, and uh I think this is just you've got to dig deeper into the actual understanding of payment, banking, capital markets, and blockchain. It's not easy stuff, but once you dig into it, the opportunities are there. So uh very excited and I'm hyped and I'm um looking to build myself. So as we close out the show, uh just want to uh you know ask you for a couple of questions here. Um what does success for Bitsa look like in five years?
Daniel Vogel:So I always, you know, this is this is kind of like one of those questions that you know every time in my career where I ask myself that, like it it really changes because I think the thing that really ultimately motivates me is like just creating impact and just seeing the crypto revolution just take hold, whether it's as an asset class and convincing people to invest in it, or whether it's like really rigging the new kind of like payment infrastructure locally and globally. But it always changes, right? Like I remember when we first raised cash, and I was like with a we just deposited the the money was just deposited into the account, and I remember sitting there looking at this whiteboard um with my co-founders and telling them like guys, you realize that in order for us to like live up to this valuation, we need to do this much activity on the platform, and it just looked impossible. And um, you know, because if you would have asked me then like what the success for you look like in like five years, I would have said, like, well, I don't know, we have like a few clients that like you know really like these solutions that we're trying to build. Uh I don't know. And it just kind of like every every time it gets bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger. I think for me, like over the next five years, the things that I really, really want to see are um better bridges with the on-chain world, like all this stuff that I was talking about, like stable coins being um a building block for the on-chain world. Uh like we see the on-chain world is growing a lot, but it's growing a lot with um uh a fairly still small set of customers, and I just want that to grow. And like we're seeing some awesome stuff, like you know, some companies that are doing the DeFi mullet approach where they, you know, they they have us uh that they present themselves as a company and you open an account with them as a company, but then they're using kind of like DeFi on the back, and so I feel like that's exciting. Um, but I really want to see that just grow massively because I I really want to see the this vision of like the global financial products that are locally accessible play out, particularly because I'm from a part of the world where there's very little competitiveness in financial services, there's very shitty access, there's like all these kind of like problems. And I would love nothing more to see them some of them, the Mexican banks are some of the most profitable banks in the world. I think they're the most profitable banks in the world, and um, and it's because like a lot of them have been these very big almost monopolies. Um, and I mean they're obviously not a monopoly because there are multiple of them, but they they they kind of behave almost like one. Um and I'm just so excited to see competition and to see competition in an angle that I think they're underestimating. And that gets me very, very excited. And if Pizza can play a big role in allowing customers to access these products, whether it's effects, whether it's lending, whether it's whatever, but if we can be a if we can be um an agent, um like an agent for change or a mechanism for individuals to really access these um you know this world, I think that would be very, very, very like that's kind of like one of the things that I really want. Ultimately, what I really care about is just impact. Like I just want to help people and businesses have access to just more competitive and better solutions. And um and and and and I think if we can continue to scale our business, that'll that'll be good good success for us.
Chuk Okpalugo:Throughout the show, you've you've been you already kind of dropped a lot of kind of builder advice, actually. What would you say is your your the key piece of advice for like a burning entrepreneur in the space who's trying to move the world on chain as you're doing?
Daniel Vogel:Yeah, uh look, I I would say the I think my biggest advice is like if you're building in this space, you're likely touching the money of someone, whether it's a company or whether it's a customer. And um and you're not only representing you or your company, you're representing this entire industry. And so my biggest piece of advice is if you do that with care and you do that with responsibility, you stand a much, much, much, much better chance of of success than you know if you if you just don't do that. And um and you will significantly hurt the industry, right? If you we've seen sadly a lot of bad players, and um and I'm just honestly really tired of them. And so just want to see more legitimate people with not only good intentions, but who are willing to be you know responsible and be held to account, just building in this space.
Chuk Okpalugo:Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um and then finally, last question what are we not talking about enough? What should the industry talk more about?
Daniel Vogel:I mean it's it's this is so interesting because the industry is just so large, right? And and depends on who you ask. Like uh I feel like there's pockets uh everywhere of people who are hyper specialized on things. Um you know I I already touched on this, but I really feel very strongly that the Cambrian explosion of chains is I think net negative to the industry. Just like the Cambrian explosion of coins, I still feel was net negative for the industry. Like there's there's obviously room for more, there's obviously room for improvement, there's obviously room for um you know innovation, and we've seen you know the most successful coins from an investment perspective be successful, particularly because they wanted to do something very, very different, right? Like, you know, if you think about Bitcoin versus Ethereum, um the very very different value propositions, right? But how is Bitcoin and Bitcoin chain? Well, I'm I'm gonna get into issues here, but um, you know, uh Bitcoin Cash, like how are those really different today? They're not that different, right? Or Litecoin, they're not they're not that different. And and we created a lot of this stuff that ended up just being noise and ended up just really diluting, I think, a lot of the narrative of the space and making things just a lot more complex. And my sense is that the the multiple chain world is doing that. And so, like, if you're thinking about innovating and creating a new chain, like you you need to have a very, very, very good reason to do so. Otherwise, I would just think of these things as like public goods and try to just build on top of them. And um, and and and and and I and I say that because I do I am seeing liquidity get fractioned, like just get fraction a little bit too much to my liking. And um, and I feel like if we if we just had everything in that smaller set of venues, like we would actually be able to have a lot more liquidity and build a lot more stuff more effectively. And I don't feel like this is having enough of a conversation, except for like people in Reddit and X who complain about like, oh yeah, now now this company needs its own chain. Okay, great. Um, but but I feel like as a industry, we haven't really gotten together and said, okay, folks, do we really need do we need do we really need everyone to have its own chain? And um, and if so, if the answer is yes, then like what are the things that we're going to build to like pull liquidity across chains and make them be a lot more interoperable or or whatever. Um, but my sense is that there's actually not that much room for so many chains unless there's like you know significant innovation that takes place.
Chuk Okpalugo:Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I I I know a few teams who are trying to solve that cross-chain single liquidity pool, as you mentioned. It's hard enough trying to bootstrap local currency stable coins and tackle all the various different experiments. Uh and so, yes, I think that's a key thing that um we can spend more time on uh in the industry. So that's great. That's a really, really helpful way to round out. Uh thank you so much for joining us, uh, Daniel. Um, where can our listeners go to find out more about you and Bitso?
Daniel Vogel:Yeah, so they can follow me on on X and uh Vogolito and on uh and Bitso is just at Bitso. And then the last thing that I would say is like if anything around stable coins was interesting to you, uh, we are putting together the second uh the iteration, I guess the next iteration of our stablecoin conference um in June 15 and 16th of 2026 at the World Trade Center in Mexico City. There's going to be programming on that front, and it'll be sandwiched between World Cup games um in Mexico. And so we we would love to welcome your audience to come in and join because uh last year we had an amazing event and turnout, and we would love to see more people you know building and getting excited about the the stablecoin industry.
Raj Parekh:It was easily one of my favorite conferences of the year. So yeah, I'm I'm I'm looking forward to it next year as well.
Chuk Okpalugo:Thank you, Ras.
Raj Parekh:Great timing.
Chuk Okpalugo:Uh and Raj, uh, what about you? Where can folks go to find you online?
Raj Parekh:Yeah, you can find me on X at Arpark and Mana.xyz.
Chuk Okpalugo:Excellent. And for me, it's stablecoinblueprint.com or on x chuck underscore xyz or on LinkedIn at Chuck Arcpalugo. This has been MoneyCode. Thank you so much, Dan. Uh and have uh uh a nice rest of your day.
Daniel Vogel:Thank you so much, Chuck. Thank you, everyone. Have a great day.
Chuk Okpalugo:Thanks so much for listening to Money Code. There was so much to take away from today's conversation. I learned a lot, and I hope you did too.
Raj Parekh:If you enjoyed this episode, do us a favor, share it with someone you know, or give us a five star rating on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcast from. Until next time.
