Stellar House Sessions #3: Daniel Vogel

And many of my teachers told me, 'Why are you going to start a Bitcoin company in Mexico? Are you crazy?' If you want to start a Bitcoin company, do it in the United States. There are more opportunities. I really wanted to return to Mexico and do something great for the country. Bitso started as a company where crypto was the focus, but it was never the vision. You were there. We've always talked about how we can use technology to make it useful. That's the 'make crypto useful' theme we always discussed. And now what's happening is that while crypto is integrating into the financial system, we're also seeing the financial system integrating into crypto, and that's an enormous opportunity for society. I'm super excited about this new Stablecoin Conference happening in mid-June because we're bringing together a group of super relevant and important people to once again try to figure out how we can continue driving this industry forward.

Great question. First of all, thank you so much for having us. It's always a pleasure to see you, Lalo. As you said, we've known each other for a long time and I always remember with great affection the time you spent at Bitso and everything you did for us. It's interesting, you start with this 'How Will You Measure Your Life,' which is a book that a professor of mine from my master's program wrote. It started as a graduation speech, and someone in the audience liked it so much that they worked with the professor to turn that speech into a book. I hadn't thought about this book in a while. When you mentioned it, it brought back great memories. It's a book I've recommended to many people because I believe what Clayton Christensen, the author, argues is that life goes far beyond the money you make, far beyond the companies you work for, and that you have to think very carefully about what really matters to you. It's a beautiful book because it gives you the opportunity to reflect, to pause a bit and reflect. I had the opportunity to read that book before getting into the Bitso adventure, which has consumed me. And I remember that as a result of that book, which interestingly was also the first book I gave to who is now my wife, at the time she was my girlfriend, I had the capacity at a moment in my life when I wasn't yet an entrepreneur, I was finishing or during my master's, to think about what things were going to be important to me. And there are certain values that are very important to me. One of them is family. I've been very fortunate to have grown up in a family where I've always been very close to my parents, my siblings, sometimes closer, sometimes less close, but with a very intense family core. And that's something I've tried to replicate with my immediate family. It's one of my values, one of the most important values that have to be central to how I live my life. And I think the premise of all this is, how do you make sure that when you're on your last breath, you can look back and say, 'I'm happy with what I did?' That's the Regret Minimization Theory of Bezos. So family is a very important thing for me. Another thing that was very important to me was that at that moment in my life, I had been living in the United States for 10 years, and the US is an incredible country with many opportunities. And many of my teachers told me, 'Why do you want to go to Mexico to build a Bitcoin company?' Because the word crypto didn't even exist yet, it was Bitcoin. I formed the Bitcoin Club at Harvard, which I think is now called the Blockchain Club or something like that. But it was Bitcoin back then, everything was Bitcoin. And Bitso, in fact, comes from the contraction of Bitcoin and peso, because the industry at that time was Bitcoin. And they told me, 'Why are you going to start a Bitcoin company in Mexico? Are you crazy?' If you want to start a Bitcoin company, do it in the United States. More opportunities. But another value that was very important to me was that having had the opportunity to live in the United States and have exposure to interesting business models, brilliant minds, great education, the startup world, I really wanted to return to Mexico and do something great for the country. And in that regard, there have been amazing milestones in the last few years, in the 12 years of building Bitso. We were one of the companies that won the BBA Talent. We were recognized by MIT as one of the great innovations. At some point, the then president of the country called us a digital leader. And then we became the country's second unicorn, the first fintech unicorn, the first in Mexico, the first crypto unicorn in Latin America. The unicorn part is something I think is super interesting and was a milestone, but it's by no means the end of the company. It's the opposite, now there's much more responsibility. I remember that day and that announcement was also very exciting because it was like, we've achieved it, but we've only earned the privilege to keep working incredibly hard.

I think you're right from the perspective that at the end of the day, I'm a systems engineer and I'm fascinated by technology, and obviously I've gotten excited hundreds of times about the technology itself. But at the end of the day, I think what's always very important is understanding that to build a company, you have to have a customer behind it who has a problem, and you have to be a way to solve that problem better than what that customer currently has access to. And that can happen with crypto and blockchain, it can happen with AI, it can happen in the cloud, it can happen with a phone solution. There are different ways, but at the end of the day, I think what's central is how you can use technology to give that customer a better solution. So, one of the things that excites us a lot is, on one hand, on the Bitso Retail side, everything we do for consumers and wholesale, is how we can use the technology and development capabilities we have today in the company to give better solutions to these customers we have. Recently, for example, we added the securities part to Bitso. You can buy a share of Amazon today, or a gold ETF, or track the NASDAQ index, etc. And many people come to us and ask, 'How did you make this so fast, so user-friendly, so simple?' And it's because we're using everything we've learned in technology development, whether it's crypto, AI, cloud, whatever. But with that principle you just mentioned, which is that at the end of the day you have to use technology not for technology's sake, but because you can use it to solve a problem better. And sometimes the customer doesn't even know what they're using. When you call someone on WhatsApp, you don't know if it's using TCP/IP or UDP messaging, or how the message is encrypted. What matters to you is that the message arrives quickly, that not everyone can read your message, only the person you want to receive it. But the technology behind it, what makes it work, is really somewhat irrelevant. What you want is that experience. And in everything we're doing at Bitso Business, it's very similar. We're building the infrastructure so companies can build on top of this infrastructure and give these solutions to their customers, but we're also giving solutions directly to these customers if they acquire them. And those direct solutions also don't expose the crypto part. So, I think Bitso started as a company where crypto was the focus, but it was never the vision. You were there, we always talked about how we can use technology to make it useful. That has always been the core. And now what's happening is that while crypto is integrating into the financial system, we're also seeing the financial system integrating into crypto, and that's an enormous opportunity for society. And what's important here is that we all have the capacity to see how we can use what's been built on both sides to capitalize on it for the benefit of customers.

100%. The mission of Bitso is very similar. They started with a blockchain company, but if tomorrow a better technology comes along to solve the problems they want to solve, they'll probably use it because technology is a tool to reach an end, not the end itself. 100%. Completely agree. I think that's super key. Technology is not an end, but technology is really a facilitator, 100%. A facilitator.

I think competition is great. Competition is one of the best ways we know as a society to provide tangible benefits to consumers. If you study economics, it's well studied, when there's competition it's always to the consumer's benefit. And if I tell you that one of my values has always been that in Mexico there's better access, better products, creating a positive impact. So, the fact that there's now competition in this entire industry and you're starting to see more players, I think that will translate into better products for customers and that will mean something better for the country. So, all of that excites me, and obviously I want and I'm committed to Bitso continuing to be a leading provider and that we keep being at the forefront in everything we do. We've achieved it in many aspects and in some aspects we've fallen asleep and need to catch up, but again, I think it's very good and it's also a validation. If this entire industry weren't successful and had stayed small and Bitso had kept 100% of the market forever, it was probably because it was the wrong bet. The fact that there's an entire ecosystem becoming more dynamic, with more players, more investment, more companies wanting to be part of this market, is an enormous validation that it's a dynamic, growing, important market that will have a significant impact on the country, the region, the world, etc. So, I see this as very positive and I think what we have to do as Bitso is keep knowing how, where, and in what way we're going to compete.

Yes, one of the things that has differentiated us and that we believe will continue to be very important in a world where AI can replace much of what traditionally were barriers to entry like code, engineers, etc., is all the work we've done in establishing trust with authorities, with customers, with our partners, etc. We see the entire regulatory part as very important. Getting licenses is something that an LLM can help you 100% to learn, to build your manuals, etc., but at the end of the day, it requires a lot of time and expertise to have and operate a regulated license in a country like Mexico, Brazil, or Argentina. But at the end of the day, I think where we really need to compete to keep being leaders is in giving the best solution to our customers. I think that's what you sometimes have to do, be the best and ensure the competition doesn't have the capacity due to your scale, your processes, your technology, etc., to reach that point. But also from the perspective of what new businesses I can develop, what new products, what new solutions, and how those developments can add value to the ecosystem you're creating. And as I was saying, we're still very committed. One of the things we did recently, as I mentioned, on the retail side, this securities part was very important because many people said, 'I love your platform, I have assets with you, but I also have assets on other platforms, and if you offered them, I'd move them with you.' And we're seeing a month-over-month increase in the amount of assets we have in custody on behalf of our customers with this, which is super exciting for us. On the Bitso Business side, we also said, as I was telling you, this is a very big industry. The principle of the entire crypto industry is free access. So we said, let's make a conference that brings all the players together. It doesn't matter if they're competitors, partners, whatever. Let's create a conference where we can really think about the future of this stablecoin industry. And look at the amount of positive things that came out of that conference. Brutal. Not only from the perspective of bringing relevant players, but the talks that were given and everything that's happened in the last year, well, not a year, but in the last few months, from the perspective of industry development, it's been amazing and I'm super excited about this new Stablecoin Conference happening in mid-June. Because we're once again bringing together a group of super relevant and important people to try to figure out how we can continue driving this industry forward. On the Bitso Business side, we started a lot with FX and international transfers, and then we realized that many of those customers also have an enormous need for local payments, and we've grown local payments in Mexico brutally. I think we grew local payments in Mexico 30 times. It was a business we were sort of operating but didn't really have a good product built around. Suddenly we said, 'Hey, there's a need here.' And our customers asking for this service are also asking for this other one, so why not offer it and build it well? We built it well as a business and the customers have reacted tremendously well to this local payments business. So now we have a large local payments arm, which again isn't necessarily crypto because local payments use rails that aren't crypto. There's still an opportunity at some point to add a blockchain component or update that local payment system, but today it operates at large scale and we're becoming a very important player in that area. And again, that mentality of saying what are my customers' problems and how can I use technology, licenses, etc., to build something that gives these customers a solution in a way that maybe before no one was giving them or no one had the capacity to give them at this level of service.

It's a great question. And I think MXNB is going to play a very different role than dollar stablecoins. I've told this story many times, but many years ago, well, I don't know if many, but 15 years ago, I had the opportunity to drive or try to drive from London to Mongolia. And I say try because I only made it to Kazakhstan and the car died there. Well, it died in Tajikistan, then we still crossed Kyrgyzstan, then we bought another car, got to Kazakhstan, and then we abandoned the adventure. We were just missing Russia and Mongolia. But the thing that I found incredible and I think has been an interesting part of building Bitso is that anywhere in the world, you show up with a $100 bill, no matter where you are, and people accept it. People accept a $100 bill. Sometimes you're at the border, you can be at the border between Uzbekistan and Tajikistan and right at the border there are people who exchange money for you, but you walk 100 meters from the border and the money from Uzbekistan in Tajikistan, nobody wants it. This doesn't work here at all. But you're in the most remote region. There's a place we went to, you can search for it, Murghab in Tajikistan, where our car was destroyed, and it's one of the most remote places in the world I've been to in my life, and you pull out a $100 bill and people accept it. The Mexican peso, the Brazilian real, the Argentine peso, they don't have that branding, that weight, that authority, maybe that usage. The dollar has been, for a very long time, the world's currency. Almost everything is priced in dollars, transactions cross in dollars. It's a very important currency. Now, I think stablecoins are going to play a super important role too, and I think the role local stablecoins will play will be in three ways. One, I think in many places in the world they'll be fundamental for making payments between individuals, between businesses, etc., where you don't have a payment system as advanced as SPEI or Pix. But even in payment systems as advanced as SPEI and Pix, being a participant in the SPEI system is still difficult. You need a license, you need to connect and be approved by the Central Bank, and now you start having these avenues to transfer value that work outside of those requirements. And I find it super interesting to think about what would happen if suddenly everyone could transact the way you transact with physical pesos, but do it on a free-access system like blockchain to cross transactions. The second thing is that I'm very interested in the FX topic. Today I'm a firm believer that you always have to build a world with fewer intermediaries. I believe disintermediation is a force that as technology advances, you necessarily have to remove intermediaries. And today when you do a normal FX transfer, you go through a bunch of intermediaries. Now, when you do it with stablecoins, you remove a bunch of intermediaries, but you still have several. Bitso is an intermediary. Bitso is doing the part of generating liquidity between dollar stablecoins and pesos, and we're an intermediary. I think in the near future, you're going to have a world where FX really happens on-chain. It's already happening, but volumes are still very small, but I think the world will converge to where FX really happens on-chain, and then these local stablecoins will play a fundamental role in making this disintermediation happen. I love that a lot because I feel you can start doing very interesting things globally. I was talking with the Stripe team. They had a breakfast with Atrapi here in Mexico City. We went, we were talking, and something I liked, we know Stripe acquired Bridge and Prevy, one of the companies for international payments, etc. And I asked them, 'Do you think AI agents are going to transact traditionally, maybe connecting a card, or will it be 100% agentic?' And they told me, 'No, all payments, we're expecting that within 10 to 15 years they'll be on blockchain.' Exactly. So you're seeing the same thing, there's a lot of industry validation, and for me it's that moment where you say, 'Here, a solution has been found for third-party intermediation and adding a bunch of intermediaries that the end user ultimately pays for.' Bitso isn't going to say, 'I'll give you the product for free because it's a company.' The other intermediaries won't either. And precisely the fact that the end user can receive 3% more, 2% more, is brutal. From the business side it's a great margin, but also for the person receiving the remittance, you don't know how many meals you might be saving them by using these new technologies. 100%. And so, for me that was the third point, that there's a whole series of products and services that can be built today with stablecoins and in the future that can't be built in the traditional financial world, can't be built with a BBVA account, can't be built with access to SPEI. They'll require this new technology because at some point, SPEI was technology, right? And it's incredible technology, but technology always finds a way to disrupt past technologies. Exactly. So I think there's really an opportunity for a new paradigm that will grow the type of products and services that can be offered when you change that paradigm, when the paradigm is no longer you have to have a bank account. And you just said it, if you have your agent, how are you going to make your agent open a bank account at BBVA? No, it's incompatible. You might open it and delegate to your agent the ability to transact through your account, and surely we'll see some of these things, I don't doubt it, but obviously it's much easier to give your agent 100 MXNBs and say, do what you need to do. Yes, let's see what you do. Or do these things I'm asking you to do, or whatever. And where AI or artificial intelligence can natively transact and have counterparties and verify that transactions happened and the counterparty can do the same. So I really like telling this story, I'll tell it to you really quickly, but when my dad put internet in the house in 1995, I was 9 years old. I went from a world without internet to a world with internet, or a house without internet to a house with internet. And the rules when I was 9 were: don't talk to strangers, definitely never get in a stranger's car, never put your personal data on the internet, and definitely never put my dad's credit card on the internet. I didn't have one then, but don't put my dad's card on the internet. Why? Because the narrative back then was that they'd clone your card and you'd get scammed and there'd be a lot of fraud. And today, we all measure ourselves, we all move around calling a stranger from the internet who comes for us, knows our data, we get in their car and they already have all our banking data. That's Uber. What in 1995 seemed like the biggest prohibitions I could have as a person, in 2026 is the most common thing I and many other people do. That's a paradigm shift, right? No, and it's much shorter. I started using Uber in 2010, so it was really 15 years. Now we're talking about 30, 31, but it was really 15 years, this paradigm shift. And that's the type of thing I think we need to start thinking about. What excites me about building MXNB, building BRL1, is building the infrastructure that will allow new paradigms to exist that today aren't possible with the infrastructure, products, whatever you want to call it that exist today. And that's the super exciting part. Now, does your buddy want to buy MXNB today to hold it? Well, no. We have to build these things so your buddy says, 'I want to have MXNB.' And I think we're going to see several of those. I hope at the Stablecoin Conference we can announce a very important one for us that we've been working on, which I can't tell you about yet, but things are coming that I think will be great for local stablecoins.

Great country.

Enormous opportunity.