How Minteo Put Colombia's Peso Onchain and Built a Two-Sided FX Market

Alright. Okay. Another awesome conversation. You're tuning in to StableDash live. We're here in Mexico City with William Duran from min you said at Mintio last night. I was I I've been saying in Mintio. I've been, like Mintio, Mintio depends if you're, you know, Latin. Because I've been saying I've been saying it with, like, a little little spice. Same with Flair. Yeah. Okay. So Same with Flair. Mateo. Okay. CEO of business.

StableDash live is sponsored by Agora, built for global institutions moving money at the speed of the Internet. You can learn more at agora.finance. Give us the quick intro as we kick off.

Well, first, thank you for having me. Yes. So Mintio, we're a stablecoin issuer and payment infrastructure for Latin America. So we are, you know, most famously known for the Colombian peso stablecoin, which we launched about three years ago. It's the the leading stablecoin in Colombia. And then, you know, beyond that, I think we've expanded to build infrastructure for payments in in Colombia and looking to to expand beyond that as well. The lead say I mean, that's that's big. The leading stablecoin

in Colombia. How do you how do you track what that means? Is how how do you measure, you know, even even that claim? How do where do what do you look at to determine what that means? Yeah. I mean, I think well, one is,

you know, the the ecosystem that we built. So if you actually talk to, you know, the the the players that operate in space, right, whether it's fintechs, whether it's, you know, crypto companies, you know, I I I think you can you can make the claim just because most will say that they either use Mintio or know of Mintio or have used Mintio at some point. I think for me, that's, you know, that that's the biggest one of all. Right?

Because you can talk about volume, which we did a bunch of volume last year as well, and you can talk about AUM. You can talk about all these things. But at the end of the day, it's like, you go around asking people what stablecoin of the peso they know or they use Yeah. The brand is built. Typically refer us. Right? So And it's COPM?

It's the COPM. Yep. Okay. What can you share around those numbers? Like, what what are those kind of key metrics that are publicly available to kind of flex a little bit and give people an idea of what you what you guys have been up to volume wise? Yeah. So I think Colombia,

you know, when we first started about three years ago, you know, volume was nothing. Right? I think we're doing Sorry. Yeah. You gotta start somewhere. Yeah. I think we were doing, like, maybe, I don't know, like, $50,000 a month and, you know, our AUM was, like, 200 k. Like, it was really nothing, I think. You know, you fast forward, like, you know, three years and and what you see is, like, there's actually been exponential growth in that in that usage. Right?

So if you if you talk about volume, we went from maybe, I don't know, fifty, a hundred k a month to to I think we did last twelve months, like, $1,200,000,000 in launching volume. Wow. So yeah. I mean, you know, every month's a little bit different, but I think now we're starting to get into this rhythm of, like, you know, doing $20.40, $50,100,000,000 dollar months. And even AUM has grown. Right? Not not to the same extent, but I think, you know, we're probably 10 x, like, two years ago. So Yeah.

In in the kind of lane that you're in specifically, I'm wondering how you measure success because we were talking. It was like, it's hard to know like, you can build a really interesting business here with this product and wedging yourself into relationships with companies and then go build, like, other things around that stablecoin.

I'm curious for one, like, strategically how you're thinking about the future, but just today, how are you measuring success, and what are those, like, metrics specifically you're looking at? Is it is it volume, or are there other things right now that that seem really important to track?

I mean, volume is definitely one, but I I think that, you know, as I said, I think at the end of the day, the way you measure success is by seeing companies use the stablecoin for for, you know, for a variety of reasons and actually building an ecosystem around them. Right? So, I mean, you talk about brand, and it's at the end of the day, the brand is a reflection of, like, people wanting to interact with the with the assets, with the with the infrastructure that we built.

And and I think what what's changed probably from, like, I don't know, this year to last year or the year before is that you're actually starting to see now a lot of players, you know, come to us to build, you know, to to build this this this local rails with Minute because they see us as kind of the de facto stable point for Colombia.

So whether it's, you know, Tempo or, you know, Tether or Circle or or many of these these guys, right, I think, or, you know, companies that are just doing, like, payment orchestration, they will typically look and and and try to find who's kind of the local winner in each country. I mean, and that's why, you know, when they go to Brazil, they'll talk to either b r o one or Avenia. When they come to Colombia, they'll talk to Mintio. That that type of thing. Right?

So I think that that, know, you for me, it's, like, becoming established. And then as you become established as a brand, more opportunities come, more volume comes, you know, banks wanna partner with you because they see you as a trusted and, like, reliable source. And and then kind of everything just kinda starts clicking. Right? And Yeah. And to me, that's been kinda what's been happening the last couple months and last year. And and that's a show of, like, the the the position that we've taken in the market.

Yeah. So

ground us a little bit as we kind of kick off the the conversation a little bit. We're here in Mexico City, and something that I think is really important that we wanna focus on being here is the role that these country specific stablecoins play or these, like, very regional use cases that we're seeing. What what do we need to know about the role that these stablecoins play? But also maybe the misconceptions of them too. I feel like sometimes we can bucket them into, like, a limited place in our minds.

So, like, help us understand, like, when you think about the these these country specific stablecoins,

what what what are we what what how should we really be thinking about them? No. I mean, it's a yeah. It's a good question. I think it's been debated, actually. You know, last year, I was at this conference, and we had a conversation with with Ben Reed, Bidso, and, you know, there was a whole panel about non US stablecoins. And the quite you know, then so many things come up outside. Okay. You know, how do you, you know, track the success? Do you track it by AUM similar to, like, USAT or USAC?

And it's like, sort of, but not really. Right? Because people wanna you know, they might wanna use them, but not necessarily, you know, keep the balances on local currency all the time. So I I I think, you know, what we've realized is that you have to kinda reframe the problem to really figure out what's the best way to measure success for for for for for these, you know, sort of local stablecoins.

What I what I think and where I think kind of the market is heading is that, to me, there's been kind of like a like a clear initial use case around on chain effects. So, you know, there's so much US dollar liquidity. There's so much usage of USDT, USDC. And I think what you're starting to see is that as markets slowly mature, you start to see an interest in moving everything on chain.

And to move everything on chain, you actually have to tokenize the local assets because because at the end of the day, if not, you end up with kinda two different worlds. Right? Like, the on chain world where, like, USAT and USCs live, and then, like, an off chain world where you just, like, I don't know, interacting with the traditional peso.

So I think what we're trying to do is really get a lot of these companies locally to start tokenizing, talking to financial groups, start tokenizing, trying to push more and more of this volume on chain so that we can actually start building these these literally on chain FX markets. And and the more money you also tokenize on chain, it starts driving the price down of FX. Right? So I think that's one.

And then two, I think it's you know, it might take a little bit more time, but we're seeing a lot of interest in, like, local payments. So, actually, companies that see the efficiencies of the blockchain that wanna actually now, you know, use a local asset on chain to be able to move money around between, you know, between business accounts or that wanna offer wallets to consumers, and they're in they're starting to integrate these local assets. Right?

Mhmm. Mhmm. Yeah. It's interesting when we think about the just the the role that companies like you play because you have this depth of customers and the depth of, like what seems like almost a really interesting two sided equation where you can help, like, you give access to these specific places, but then you can also expand access for those existing clients into other areas on chain.

When you think about the the customers and the and the people that you've partnered with in the last couple of years, it sounds like volume is growing. You you the use cases are growing. When you think about the customers or the use cases that you're focused most on right now, what what does that look like? Any examples that come to mind as I think the world is trying to figure out, like, okay, who should I go with for this use case?

Like, what is that perfect what's what if there's a email coming in your inbox right now of, like, hey. I'm looking to do this, or this is my business use case. Like, what is the perfect use case for you guys right now? Or is that the wrong way to be thinking about it?

No. I mean, I think, you know, there's many ways to be thinking about it. I think, you know, for us, you know, the things that interest us the most or at least, like, I guess, like, the clients that would interest us the most would ideally be clients where where it's very clear the need of a of a peso. Right? Because, you know, one of the things I think that people try to do at first was, like, convince all these foreign companies to now hold, you know, like, Colombian pesos, and it's like, why why would you?

Like, there's an entire I mean, it's you know, Colombia is like, what? Fifty, sixty million people, like, that use the Colombian pesos. So it's like, okay. How do we bridge that with technology? And and to me, it's always been, like, giving the pesos, like, superpowers. Right? It's like, okay. Now you can move faster. You can you literally access via, like, API.

Like, it's it's it's, you know, it's so for me, it's like, what I what I find fascinating is, like, you know, companies that are building even if it's still niche, companies that are building, for example, like, credit solutions, and and and they wanna do it on pesos. Right? Because people earn in pesos, people have, you know, debt in pesos. So these type of things are really cool because it it's a perfect use case. Right? Payments. Right? Payments, I think, local payments is a good one.

But what we're seeing now, for example, is, like, a lot of companies now because there is a there is kind of this boom around building your own neobank or building your own wallet. What you're starting to see is, like, these big big companies. Right? Like, the that have, like, huge distribution, and they don't necessarily have to be fintechs. It could be, like, traditional businesses. You just have massive distribution pharmacies or whatever. They're starting to actually build their own wallets.

They they wanna get you know, they're following into, like, selling USDC or USDT. But in in that process, they're also realizing, like, hey. We should have a local asset. Right? Because so that, you know, so that we can, like, you know so people can send money to each other in, like, local currencies or so that we, you know, it could people can use it for, like, paying bills. So you're starting to see all this all this

all this activity move on chain, and I think that's where we kind of find that perfect match because you because we are the local asset on chain. Yeah. If if it seems like to me if you can get the local asset on chain, what whatever that might be, where wherever people in their minds store their wealth. For Americans, that's dollars. Like, that's not the case for most other parts of the world. Like, there's so many different so many different fiat currencies that are involved with store value.

The idea for a pharmacy to be able to offer, like, a peso focused almost like marketplace where, like, their users or their the people who are interacting with that business can actually have a tokenized version of that asset. The incentives that that creates for that business is really, really compelling because their whole business model historically interest riding that use case a little bit. Their whole business model has been focused on providing those services for their pharmacy and making money there.

They haven't been thought of as like a fintech organization or a neo banking organization. But with these local currencies like you guys are are delivering, embedding those with these types of tools, wallets, cards, local local tokenized assets, like you give companies that have never been able to participate in that way the ability to open completely new revenue streams because of that. Do you feel like that's a premature?

Like, I I'm not seeing a lot of, like, local pharmacies, like, launching these types of things. Is that a premature reality,

or are you starting to see, like, use cases like that pop up? Thing is you don't you don't hear about it too often, and it's not, like, publicly announced all the time. Right? Because at the end the day, it happens kinda like how banks got involved into crypto. Right? I mean, for, like, five, ten years, you know, it's kinda like nobody they were not really actively talking about what they're developing, but they were developing things. Right? Or even you look at Stripe. Right?

I mean, Stripe was pretty quiet until they weren't quiet. Right? And then they bought fall very heavily with, you know, Bridge and all these things. So so I think that I I think what you are gonna see is that some of these, like, large companies, they're definitely looking into it, they're figuring out what capabilities they can use to actually make their business more efficient, make more money. Whether a wallet fits into their business model, I don't know. For some, it might. For some, it might not.

But what is a reality is that, like, you know, the technology's there and that if you do wanna build sort of a fintech functionalities for a company, it's definitely much easier than it was ten years. Right? And and I think that's the big thing. And it's like, okay. Well, what do you need? As you said, well, you need wallets. You need custody. You probably need on chain assets. Or and if you wanna, you know, have dollars for savings products, you probably need to have, you know, dollar USDT, USDC.

So I think at the end the day, it's all part of a stack. And and it's very crazy to think that nowadays, because of all these different pieces that we've all built. Right? Like, essentially now you can essentially kinda stand up one of these things that that sounded pretty crazy. Like, ten I mean, ten years ago, if you asked, like, I don't know, some random pharmacy or company that if, you know, they they wanted to become a new bank, they're probably just like, no. Right? What are you talking about? Yeah.

It so so I think, yeah, it does it does change, I think, the way that a lot of these established large business that have large distribution think about their own business model.

Yeah. What what is now possible for Colombians that what isn't possible without Mateo? Like, without that functionality of putting that asset on chain, what are they missing out on? Like, what is the true unlock here? We're and we're we're for us, just if you're if you're listening to this, the conversation around local stablecoins, FX, things like this is gonna become a really, like, core part of the show in the coming months.

So one, I'm like, with that being said, like, why are these local stablecoins so powerful? And if you were to kind of highlight the different parts of that, like, FX stack or the different players or the different things to be exploring, Kind of a two part question. Like, why are they powerful, and who is really owning and leading the conversation right now in the, like, local FX conversation?

Yeah. And so for FX, I think, quite simply, it's just, you know, standing up a new market and actually figuring out if there's ways to to to make those operations more efficient. So I think what we've seen is, like, us by, you know, building kind of this local asset and getting other companies to start adopting it. What we've done is, like, close the close the loop in terms of speed for the for the actual settlement of of, you know, swapping between, like, USDT and Copan.

And then we've developed infrastructure to be able to then, you know, burn those Copam tokens and and and do payments to different bank accounts. Right? So we've we've actually we have several bank accounts. You know, we probably have, like, one third of of of of the banks in in Colombia that we have accounts with. And and so what it allows us is that we can actually disperse fast business payments.

So that's something that, for example, like, was was not really something that anybody was really doing, you know, two years ago. And and that's something that we were able to solve. It's like, okay. How are we able to move, like, dollars to pesos and, you know, bank account pesos faster? And it was, like, through this, like, on chain mechanism and then this payment rail that we built. Now if we talk about, like I don't know.

If we talk about, for example, how does this impact, like, a typical consumer or a typical business owner, I think it's still maybe a little bit early, but what I will say is that, you know, what you will see is that all of a sudden, for example, small businesses will likely end up interacting with players that have built a stack with these, like, neo bands or however you wanna call them. And all of a sudden, it's like they'll get access to, like, a whole new array of products that they probably didn't get before.

Right? Like, before, maybe you had a bank account open at x y z bank, you know, you probably have to pay for that bank account, and you probably have very limited features unless you're, like, a big company. All of a sudden now, you're gonna be able to access it like a world of features. Like, you're probably gonna be able to, you know, do effects within, an app. You're gonna be able to have potentially, like, you know, yield over those deposits. Right?

Or, you know, like, for example, there's, a really interesting thing, but it's, like, buildings. You know, buildings have, like, administration fees and all this stuff, and a lot of times, they're not making money on that. And all of a sudden, now they can probably have that in pesos per yield, or or they can have it in dollar per yield. So it's just like all these things that just get unlocked for small businesses where it's like functionalities that they should have always had, to be honest.

I mean, it's like functionalities that they should have had years ago Yeah. But they didn't. And now all of a sudden with these new rails, you do. You can get access to yield products, savings products, cross border products in a very sort of, like, seamless way. Right? And that's what that's what I think is gonna create the biggest impact.

The moment now any kind of, you know, mom and pop shop can literally move money basically for free, can, you know, save, can get access to yield, get access to all these different things. Yeah. Yeah.

Quick kind of, like, alpha for the show a little bit. We're gonna be rolling out a new research series powered by HopNow, a new business that we're working with really focused on FX and, like, exploring exploring this conversation.

So given that, I'm wondering if you were to, like, if were to host a dinner party or, like, have a a room of people focused on that conversation, not necessarily, like, looking for company names here, but more like categories or types of companies that that are crucial to that conversation. What if if we're exploring the idea of a dinner party about FX, like, who are you inviting to that table? What kind of companies and, like, parts of that conversation are really key?

Yeah. I mean, I think for FX, you probably have well, one, you know, kind of market makers that understand local economies and regional economies. So, you know, Juan, the Capa, for example, is a good one. Right? So we work with him, and he actually has a good understanding of what we need in these markets, which I think sometimes is not that easy to find because you find a lot of market makers and liquidity providers that are used to, like, the US dollar. Right? Or they're used to, like, you know, big economies.

And and Latin America is very new one. So I think actually having somebody that understands the risk, that's willing to park money in local currency to market make, so it's actually someone that feels comfortable holding a balance in local currency. Right? You know, if you asked me three years ago, that that that would be, like, zero.

Now you're starting to actually see a couple of a couple of players that are, you know, willing to do market making, at least for some of the bigger markets like Mexico, like Brazil Yeah. Slowly slowly more, you know, Colombia. So that's one of them because you need to have, like, efficient market making for these things to take off. Are there a lot of market makers No. Not not not in my opinion. I don't think there's enough good ones.

Why is that?

Because what I said, I think a lot of them focus on the bigger markets. Right? So you do market making for, I don't know, the the the pound, the dollar. But, you know, coming here, I think you would either have to have, like, a very focused LatAm strategy or potentially just be a LatAm company. Actually, we found that, you know, for us, it's like our market makers are literally Colombian companies that have pesos, and for them, it's just tokenizing what they already have.

It's not, you know, it's not thinking always about low. Well, you know but I have dollars, and now I'm taking a risk on pesos. How does that look like? Right? So their balance sheet is in pesos, essentially. So I think it's it's it's about, like, risk and and and also understanding the ecosystem. Right? And so I think that's one banks. I think it's another one. I think it's important to at the end of the day, it's like, you know, the the the banking layer is super important.

So being able to operate comfortably with banks, them understanding the operations that goes on on the FX side, aligning in terms of compliance, aligning in terms of you know, all these things are super important to have, like, a seamless operation. I think I think if you can't have a seamless operation, that's gonna continue causing friction for this industry. Right?

Because, okay, it's it's all incredible until, you know then the bank gets involved, and then if you don't meet the requirements, then you're not offering a really great product, especially if you're using the rails. So I think aligning with banks, with effects test, these type of things, I think, is very crucial to kinda merge those two worlds together.

And then, obviously, obviously, clients, you know, client or cross border companies or companies that that need to move money around because, essentially, they're the actors that end up kind of, you know, putting both sides together. So if you have, you know, importers, exporters, people that need dollars, but then people that need pesos, you actually start kinda having a a more efficient market. Right? Yep. Yep.

Not not how it's been kind of in recent years that's been just a bunch of dollars wanting to come into pesos. So it becomes you know, the liquidity in pesos gets really dried up. So what you wanna do is move everything on chain. So you can have a bunch of people that have pesos that need dollars, and a lot of companies that need dollars that need pesos, and then you start establishing Two sided. Two sided marketplace. Right? Do

you think that's really the future of, like, how you're thinking about acceleration is, like, creating sort of those two sided equations?

I think so, but you need to do the hard work of actually getting all these players on chain. Yeah. And then at first, the incentive is likely gonna be speculation arbitrage. Right? Because there's gonna be all these opportunities for that to to happen.

But What's the hardest part about convincing them? Or or is maybe that's not even the right way to ask it. What is the hardest part about this process?

I think it's a little bit of everything. Right? One is trust in general in the industry. I wouldn't even say trust in Mintio. You know? I'm actually quite shocked that I I you know, you talk to a lot of, like, TradFi players, and they're like, oh, you know, we know that you guys are are well established that you're good, but we have a mandate to not touch crypto. But we're a little bit, you know, kinda to it. But But we're just starting to explore, but there's no regulation yet. Right?

So it's it's it it it's quite funny. I think we've done a lot in terms of, like, the actual positioning, but there is up to a point that that you need certain, like, kinda magical things to unblock it. And magical things, I mean, like, Genius Hack in The US. Right? Yeah. What is what is the regulation like in Colombia, generally? There is no regulation. Right? So, like, you know Totally. Digital assets are essentially, you know, an intangible. So it's it's it's, you know, it's kinda like selling whatever.

I mean, it it it it's not really classified, but it's also not illegal. It's it's not legalized. Gray zone. It's a gray zone. It's a gray zone, which is which is change, do you think? I I think so. I think so. We have elections next week, and then we have, you know and I don't wanna politicize this, but we have literally two spectrums of so we have, like, a, like, a leftist candidate and a super right kinda Trumpist candidate. K.

So I think if the right wing candidate wins, it's expected that he's gonna make announcements that are very pro crypto very early. No. I'm voting for it. So it's gonna be you know, I I I do think we're gonna have regulation, and I do think that, for example, Brazil, you know, Brazil having having you know, providing, like, digital asset licenses since November last year is gonna speed that up too because now all of the other countries are gonna start looking at Brazil to do something similar.

So I do think that's gonna change, and I do think that's gonna unblock a lot of the institutional usage, and and and

and it's really you know, that's where a lot of the volume is. And Totally. We've definitely seen that in The US. So gotta pause here. I know that there's so much more we can uncover, but gotta take a quick break. You're tuning in to StableDash live. That was our conversation with William from Mintio. So excited to continue this. We're here in Mexico City. If you're just now tuning into us, we're here. We're on the show floor.

We're having conversations with the top builders, in the space infrastructure, FX, stablecoins themselves, all powered by our wonderful friends at Bitso Business and Agora. We'll be right back. We're gonna take a quick break, and we'll keep it going. Thanks, man. This is fun. Thank you.