How Bitso's Co-Founder & CEO Daniel Vogel has built a unicorn by making crypto useful
Today, we have our first LatAm guest on the AGM podcast. And it was a special one.
Bitso, LatAm’s leading crypto exchange, is fresh off of raising a $250M round led by Tiger Global months after raising a $62M round led by QED and Kaszek - and has been minted as one of LatAm’s newest unicorns.
We had Bitso’s co-founder and CEO Daniel Vogel on to talk about what it has been like to build a leading FinTech company in the region and provide access to investments and financial services.
This was such a fun conversation. We could have gone on for hours. We discussed a number of things including: how Daniel has dedicated his life to unlocking monetary freedom for people through crypto, how a talk with his friend, a janitor at his company in Silicon Valley, opened his eyes to the need for real applications of crypto to help people send money cross-border, the origins of Bitso and how Bitso was a pioneer of an online brokerage account in Mexico, how Bitso has become the on-ramp for financial services for many consumers across LatAm, the meaning behind Bitso’s slogan #makecryptouseful, the power of stablecoins and how it’s enabling people in countries with inflation and currency fluctuations to save money, how Bitso balances being a centralized company in a decentralized world, and how religion and community play a unique role in crypto.
Today, we have our first LatAm guest on the AGM podcast. And it was a special one.
Bitso, LatAm’s leading crypto exchange, is fresh off of raising a $250M round led by Tiger Global months after raising a $62M round led by QED and Kaszek - and has been minted as one of LatAm’s newest unicorns.
We had Bitso’s co-founder and CEO Daniel Vogel on to talk about what it has been like to build a leading FinTech company in the region and provide access to investments and financial services.
This was such a fun conversation. We could have gone on for hours. Daniel is such a compelling and fascinating storyteller. We discussed a number of things including:
- How Daniel has dedicated his life to unlocking monetary freedom for people through crypto.
- How a talk with his friend, a janitor at his company in Silicon Valley, opened his eyes to the need for real applications of crypto to help people send money cross-border.
- The origins of Bitso and how Bitso was a pioneer of an online brokerage account in Mexico.
- How Bitso has become the on-ramp for financial services for many consumers across LatAm.
- The meaning behind Bitso’s slogan #makecryptouseful.
- The power of stablecoins and how it’s enabling people in countries with inflation and currency fluctuations to save money.
- How Bitso balances being a centralized company in a decentralized world.
- How religion and community play a unique role in crypto.
Daniel is an early crypto pioneer and a thought leader in the space. He became intrigued by the idea of bitcoin well before many other people had heard of it and really thought of crypto as a way to unlock monetary freedom and access to financial services for the underserved.
After founding the Bitcoin Club at Harvard in 2013 while he was doing his MBA, Daniel founded Bitso with co-founders Pablo Gonzalez and Ben Peters soon after he left Harvard Square.
In Bitso, Daniel and his co-founders Pablo and Ben have created the on-ramp for financial services to many consumers in Mexico and across LatAm.
As Daniel said in a recent TechCrunch interview, the growth of the crypto ecosystem in LatAm has been nothing short of remarkable. It took Bitso six years to get their first 1 million clients. And over the course of 2020, Bitso has surpassed the 2 million client mark. They have also doubled their assets on the platform. And their transaction volume during the first quarter of 2021 exceeded transaction volume for all of 2020.
It is clear that Daniel has a passion for building out the cryptoeconomy and for making a difference in people’s lives, so much so that Bitso has made their tagline #makecryptouseful.
Thanks Daniel for coming on the AGM podcast. We hope you enjoy this episode.