Daniel, thank you very much for this conversation again with Bloomberg Linea. It's a pleasure to greet you.
I'm truly happy to be here. Thank you for the space. It's been a while since we last saw each other, so it's always a pleasure to chat with you.
Totally. Daniel, I want to start by asking you about that visit to the United States. We saw you very happy with your closest team of collaborators, I imagine, trying to test the ground or perhaps it's already very well studied, and of course, it has to do with this recent announcement from Bitso. But I also want to ask you concretely what exactly Bitso is betting on in the short term.
Look, in the United States, something very interesting is happening. There's a new president who has been in power for a little less than 9 months, and part of his campaign was that he wanted to make the United States the crypto capital of the world again. The United States had perhaps had a slightly negative position towards crypto, and President Trump wants to change that. And when we see it, when a candidate goes to campaign, there's always what they say during the campaign and what they later do once they're in office. And what was super interesting for us in the industry has been seeing that those promises Trump made during the campaign are becoming reality. And today in the United States, you have something called the Genius Act, which has already passed. It's a law that has already passed Congress and the Senate. So it's an entire act that is in force, and it's a whole series of laws that govern stablecoins. It's a regulatory framework to give regulatory clarity to anyone who wants to have a regulated digital dollar within the United States. And this is super important because that regulatory clarity from one of the most important countries in the world is something that greatly boosts the industry. And it's not just the Genius Act; they are also now working on something called the Clarity Act. The Clarity Act passed the House and is now in the Senate, or I don't remember if it's the other way around, sorry. But the Clarity Act basically regulates other companies like wallets, exchanges, etc. And the truth is, the frameworks the Americans are discussing, we see them with great enthusiasm because we've always seen that when there's regulatory clarity in these models where previously you didn't know how or in what way to do something, industries normally grow very significantly. And our expectation is that there's a very big opportunity for the United States to really continue attracting capital. Many investors who were convinced that they needed to invest in this industry were going outside the United States to invest that money, and now there are a number of investors who are rushing to return to invest within the United States because of this opportunity they're seeing. And for us, it's no different. As a company, we have the capacity, the optionality to invest in different places, and it's much easier to make an investment decision when there's a clear regulatory framework or when there's an appetite from a jurisdiction to attract that investment by giving clarity on the rules of the game, the players, etc. And the truth is, for us it was very interesting because the White House called us. The White House called us because they see the role we're playing in Mexico and Latin America. And one of the things I was talking about today is the power of crypto to not have borders. And the Americans have realized this. They've realized it's an industry that, while it can be regulated in the United States, at the end of the day, it's an industry that blurs borders a lot. And so in that aspect, they've asked us if we can give them comments on all this secondary regulation that is now being generated from the Genius Act and that at some point will come from the Clarity Act. And the truth is, for us to be invited by the White House and to be invited to give opinions on the regulation they're thinking about, much of which has, as I said, a component outside the United States, the truth is it's incredible that they open the doors to you, that they want to listen to you, that they want to talk, etc. And for us, the United States today represents an important investment opportunity, and I have nothing more to share with you about that. Other than to tell you that when you have a jurisdiction like them that is so important and wants to give so much clarity to this industry, as a company, your appetite to invest grows to do it in a jurisdiction where there are clear rules or where perhaps the authorities don't want to welcome it in the same way.
I think what you mention about regulatory clarity makes me think about how those other countries where Bitso currently has a presence are doing right now, which would be Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, and El Salvador. Could it be that in the case of Mexico, this matter of regulatory clarity is completely lost, buried, non-existent? Because there isn't the openness that a company like Bitso needs to be able to expand and develop all the products it seeks.
I would definitely tell you that, I mean, it's not dead. We talk with the authorities, and the authorities are very aware that it's an industry. All the authorities, the Ministry of Finance, the CNBV, the Bank of Mexico, I mean, everyone is seeing that the Americans are regulating it. I think this is going to end up in the USMCA, in the T-MEC. I think the Americans have already realized that this, as I said, isn't something that can just live in a bubble within the United States, and I think it's going to become an important part of the negotiations of the treaties we have with the United States. And the United States has always been a country that has a lot of influence in Mexico and in Latin America. So, I think it's very difficult to ignore. Now, I don't control the regulatory agenda of the Mexican authorities, so I can't tell you if the talks I've had have been out of curiosity because they want to understand a bit what's happening and we tell them what we're seeing in the United States, etc., or if there's really a regulatory initiative. I would tell you that I don't know of a clear initiative. But really, I think it's an enormous opportunity for Mexico to understand how to give this regulatory clarity to this industry, right? Because we believe it's truly an industry that comes to democratize access, lower costs, basically give more opportunities to people, and that increases the competitiveness of financial products in Mexico, increases innovation in the financial sector, which I understand are all the things that are important in the president's Plan Mexico. So, I would like to think that this is a very important moment for the country to understand how to bring more clarity to a clearer regulatory framework in the country.
There are many things happening, you know many of them, so where does this fall within the priority of things on the national agenda?
Well, I don't have the perception that it's very high, but I think a role we have as a company is that education, that accompaniment of the authorities, and trying to achieve advances in regulation because for us it's incredibly important. But we don't just believe it's important for us; I think there's no other way. Banks in the United States are already adopting it, banks in Europe are launching their stablecoins. In Mexico, there was this, or well, there is this policy that there has to be a healthy distance, and that healthy distance starts to break when all the correspondent banks of Mexican banks already have their crypto projects. So, there's no longer a separation between the crypto world and the financial world, at least not in the United States. And that's only going to keep growing, and I think it's something that just can't be ignored. And on the contrary, I think we need to open the discourse and talk and see how we do it so that this grows, and that it grows in a very responsible way, but that it grows and that we benefit from the good things, and that we have regulatory frameworks to mitigate the bad things, which is exactly what we see in these regulatory frameworks being developed in the United States, because they've put a lot of thought into mitigating cases of misuse of crypto that have existed in the past, but that are not the reason why I'm building this company and why billions of dollars are investing in this technology and in companies like ours, because what we see are very positive cases to build forward.
Well, now in this last part of your answer, it doesn't seem so far-fetched to me that an industry like the one Bitso is in could really be at the negotiation table, well, the review table of the North American trade agreement. But then, would you refer only to the crypto part, blockchain, or everything that this involves, precisely in these networks that integrate it?
Yes. Great question, because when, again, when President Trump started talking, as president, that he was going to make the United States the crypto capital of the world, and I was also invited, I think I was the only, I think it was the only Latin company they invited to the inauguration ball, to the crypto ball that was held. But there, this ambition was discussed for the United States to become the crypto capital of the world again. And within that path, there was still a lot of uncertainty about what he was going to do, how much it would be regulated, and really they are regulating everything that should be regulated. There are things that I think shouldn't be regulated, and they are explicitly saying that this series of things don't fall within these regulatory frameworks. I mean, everything related to code, for example, there was all this issue at some point where no one knew, if I build a piece of code that lives on an open blockchain network that does something and I don't operate it, this decentralized network operates it, what protections do I have as the creator of this, or how can you regulate me because it's just code that's executing? There were all these questions, sorry for getting so technical, but really the Americans have done an excellent job, in my opinion, of understanding what needs to be regulated, how to regulate those things, how to put consumer protection in place, how to pay attention to the anti-money laundering part, how to pay attention to not wanting to kill innovation, and looking at this from a holistic perspective, not just from the point of view of coming here to mitigate risks, but from a point of view of wanting this to grow, recognizing there are risks, we're going to address them, but creating a truly rich regulatory framework. And I think what we're seeing there is that stablecoins, exchanges, wallets, all these points of contact between the financial world and the crypto world are being regulated. But everything that already lives in the crypto world, all the DeFi part and all this, they're letting it be, and in fact, they're not just letting it be, they're encouraging more projects to happen there, because I think the Americans realized that when you build on top of blockchain technology, you have much more transparency and much more openness, and that's something that unfortunately very few parts of the world understand, but when you get into understanding and studying it, you realize the power it has. And I think that change coming from the United States comes from a greater understanding of this technology.
Now tell me a bit about this launch that the Bitso app is doing and what it implies for your business, and also the question of how Bitso will operate going forward, if you will continue to have your base here in Mexico or if you plan to expand and also open an office in the United States given what this implies and the interest in being in constant conversations with the government, clients, and also the competitors you're now going to face.
