The history of Bitso, Latin America's first crypto unicorn

In 2014, talking about bitcoin in Mexico meant talking about something almost clandestine. There was no regulation, banks looked on with suspicion, and buying the digital currency was complicated. That was precisely the gap Bitso set out to fill: becoming the country's first bitcoin exchange. A decade later, Bitso is Latin America's leading digital financial services group and a central player in the world's largest remittance corridor.

An exchange for a country with no crypto rules

Bitso was founded in January 2014. Ben Peters and Pablo González launched the company, and Daniel Vogel joined in 2015 as an equal partner, going on to become CEO. Vogel studied Computer Science and Economics at Stanford and holds an MBA from Harvard; Peters brought technical leadership and González business development.

The initial proposition went beyond buying and selling bitcoin: Bitso also operated as a Ripple gateway to move pesos, dollars and bitcoin across borders. From the start, US-to-Mexico remittances were in its sights. By 2016 the company had just six employees and a valuation near 10 million dollars.

Playing inside the law: the Fintech Law

Mexico took an unusual step in 2018 by passing the Law to Regulate Financial Technology Institutions, known as the Fintech Law. Rather than operate in a gray zone, Bitso chose to comply. It created the subsidiary NVIO Pagos México, authorized by the National Banking and Securities Commission as an Electronic Payment Funds Institution.

On top of that, in July 2019 it secured a license under Gibraltar's distributed ledger technology framework. Bitso positioned itself as one of the few fully regulated crypto platforms across multiple jurisdictions, a trust signal that would later prove key to attracting institutional clients.

2021: the region's first crypto unicorn

Growth came in waves. In December 2020 it closed a 62 million dollar Series B co-led by Kaszek and QED, with Coinbase Ventures and Pantera. And in May 2021 it announced a 250 million Series C led by Tiger Global and Coatue, with Paradigm, BOND and Valor Capital.

That round valued Bitso at 2.2 billion dollars and made it the first crypto unicorn in Latin America. By then it surpassed 2 million users and had more than 300 employees across 25 countries. Vogel himself highlighted the speed of the phenomenon.

It took Bitso six years to get its first million clients. Now, less than 10 months later, we have reached the 2 million mark. — Daniel Vogel, CEO of Bitso

The real business: remittances and stablecoins

Beyond speculative trading, Bitso's most solid use case turned out to be money crossing the border. The United States-Mexico corridor is the largest in the world for remittances, and Bitso dove right in.

• In 2024 it processed more than 6.5 billion dollars in remittances on the US-Mexico corridor.
• That represented more than 10% of total volume between the two countries.
• Dollar-backed stablecoins came to be around 40% of crypto purchases on the platform.
• Bitso Business serves more than 2,000 institutional clients for settlement and payments.

In 2025, through its subsidiary Juno, Bitso launched MXNB, a stablecoin backed 1 to 1 by Mexican pesos, and brought it to the XRP Ledger alongside Ripple for cross-border payments. The company closed the loop: from speculative bitcoin to a regulated financial infrastructure.

Beyond Mexico

Bitso, headquartered in Mexico, expanded operations to Argentina, Brazil and Colombia, where in January 2021 it was admitted into the country's regulatory sandbox. By 2025 it reported more than 10 million users, cementing itself as a regional benchmark.

What Bitso's story leaves behind

Bitso's trajectory shows that financial innovation does not have to fight regulation. While other crypto platforms collapsed for lack of controls, Bitso built trust by choosing to comply with the law early. And by focusing on a real pain —sending money home cheaply and quickly— it found a far more durable business than speculation.

For any entrepreneur, the lesson is twofold: trust is an asset built through transparency, and the use case that pays the bills is not always the flashiest, but the one that solves an everyday problem for millions of people.

Sources

• TechCrunch — https://techcrunch.com/2021/05/05/latam-crypto-exchange-bisto-raises-250m-from-tiger-coatue-at-a-2-2b-valuation/
• CoinDesk — https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2021/05/05/22b-bitso-becomes-first-crypto-unicorn-in-latin-america
• Crunchbase News — https://news.crunchbase.com/fintech-ecommerce/kaszek-qed-back-crypto-platform-bitso-in-62m-series-b-round/
• Ripple — https://ripple.com/ripple-press/ripple-and-bitso-expand-partnership/
• Cointelegraph — https://cointelegraph.com/news/ripple-bitso-bring-mxn-stablecoin-settlement-to-xrp-ledger-for-cross-border-payments