My Full Conversation with Imran Ahmad

At Mexico City's inaugural “Stablecoin Conference” last week, amid conversations with 1,800 attendees ranging from traditional bankers to blockchain builders, Imran Ahmad found himself explaining the same revelation over and over: the infrastructure war for Latin American stablecoin dominance isn't being fought with code—it's being won with licenses and liquidity pools most US companies don't even know they need.

Ahmad, General Manager of Bitso Business, has spent the last 18 months transforming the region's largest crypto exchange from a retail-focused platform into the backbone of Latin America's cross-border payment revolution.

His journey from traditional finance skeptic to stablecoin infrastructure evangelist mirrors the broader institutional awakening happening across the region, where practical necessity is driving adoption faster than speculation ever could.

The numbers tell the story: Bitso Business now processes 10% of all US-Mexico remittance flows—not just digital assets, but every dollar of the $65 billion flowing through the world's largest bilateral remittance corridor.

For Ahmad, a former investment banker and private equity professional who initially approached crypto with deep skepticism, this achievement represents something far more significant than market share statistics.

The $150 Billion Liquidity Problem Stalling Cross-Border Adoption

Ahmad's education in stablecoin infrastructure began with a fundamental realization that challenged everything he thought he knew about digital assets. "Unless you're able to accomplish both speed and price, you're not gonna be leveraged," he explained, describing the moment when he understood why $150 billion in stablecoin market capitalization wasn't translating into ubiquitous cross-border adoption.

The problem wasn't technological—it was structural. While USD stablecoins had achieved remarkable scale, their effectiveness in cross-border payments depended entirely on something most crypto companies had ignored: liquid conversion pairs with local currencies.

"Everyone talks about USD stablecoins being amazing, but they don't work unless there's liquidity on the other side to ensure pricing is competitive," Ahmad noted.

This insight became the foundation of Ahmad's strategy at Bitso Business. Rather than building new stablecoin technology, he focused on leveraging the decade of liquidity pools Bitso had accumulated serving 9 million retail crypto users across Latin America.

Those same USDT/MXN, USDC/MXN, BRL, ARS, and COP trading pairs that powered retail transactions could be repurposed to solve enterprise cross-border payment challenges that traditional financial institutions were struggling to address.

How Banking Licenses Create Competitive Moats in Stablecoin Infrastructure

Ahmad's traditional finance background proved invaluable when he discovered Bitso's regulatory position. Through its entity NVIO the company held an IFPE license in Mexico—equivalent to ACH authorization in the United States—enabling direct connections to the country's banking infrastructure for fiat payouts.

"It's incredibly hard to get," Ahmad observed, drawing on his investment banking experience to recognize the regulatory moat this created. Similar licensing in Brazil and Argentina gave Bitso something competitors couldn't easily replicate: the ability to seamlessly Bridge crypto rails with traditional banking systems.

This regulatory infrastructure enabled what Ahmad calls the "stablecoin sandwich" model.

Companies like Felix Pago, a WhatsApp-based remittance service, could convert USD to USDC, route through Bitso Business' infrastructure for peso conversion, and execute final payouts through traditional SPEI banking rails—all via a single API integration.

For Ahmad, this represented the convergence of blockchain technology with practical financial infrastructure that traditional finance could understand and adopt.

Enterprise Sales Cycles Accelerate as Stablecoin Infrastructure Matures

The speed of enterprise adoption caught even Ahmad by surprise. Despite his extensive B2B sales experience across healthcare payments, private equity, and venture capital, meetings with large public companies were yielding immediate contract executions in ways that defied traditional enterprise software sales cycles.

"That doesn't happen very often," Ahmad reflected, describing his initial confusion at the rapid decision-making. "I was a B2B sales guy. I understood B2B sales and I've done that for a long time. I was like, 'huh, I thought this was gonna be a little bit harder.'"

The acceleration reflected what Ahmad recognized as a broader institutional shift. Traditional financial institutions weren't viewing stablecoin infrastructure as competitive threats—they were recognizing them as enabling technology for problems they couldn't solve internally. This perspective change, mirroring Ahmad's own journey from skeptic to advocate, suggested the market was reaching an inflection point where institutional adoption could accelerate dramatically.

Building Ecosystem Infrastructure Over Direct Competition

Ahmad's approach to market development drew heavily on his venture capital experience at QED Investors, where he had served as Entrepreneur in Residence before joining Bitso . Rather than compete directly with emerging stablecoin applications, he positioned Bitso Business as infrastructure-as-a-service for the broader ecosystem.

The strategy culminated in The Push, Latin America's first stablecoin accelerator, which received over 300 applications from regional startups building on stablecoin technology. "We're not here to compete with you. We want to help you build your business using stablecoins," Ahmad explained, articulating an approach that prioritized platform effects over proprietary applications.

Portfolio companies from the accelerator include Lumx and XFX focusing on liquidity solutions, and Capa working on additional infrastructure layers. For Ahmad, this ecosystem approach reflected lessons learned from observing successful platform companies during his venture capital tenure—sustainable competitive advantages would emerge from network effects rather than technological differentiation alone.

Why Latin America Leads Global Stablecoin Payment Adoption

Ahmad's perspective on geographic market dynamics was shaped by his transition from serving US healthcare payments to Latin American financial infrastructure. While US markets focused on institutional custody and trading applications, Latin American markets were solving fundamental problems around financial inclusion and cross-border commerce that created immediate, practical value.

This geographic arbitrage in stablecoin utility created strategic opportunities that Ahmad recognized from his traditional finance background. Companies able to Bridge mature USD liquidity with emerging market demand—like Bridge the cross-border payments company acquired by Stripe for $1.1 billion—were building product-market fit through partnerships with infrastructure providers like Bitso serving these corridors.

The $1.1 trillion US-Mexico trade relationship represented more than just remittances; it was the world's largest bilateral trade corridor where stablecoin infrastructure could demonstrate scalability beyond current payment use cases. For Ahmad, this represented the addressable market expansion opportunity that justified the infrastructure investment Bitso was making.

Market Positioning for Cross-Border Payment Infrastructure

Ahmad's assessment of competitive positioning draws on his experience across traditional finance and venture capital to identify sustainable advantages in stablecoin infrastructure. Companies with early regulatory licenses and established liquidity pools are positioned to capture disproportionate value as adoption accelerates, but the window for building these advantages is narrowing as institutional interest intensifies.

From Bitso Business, May 2025

Bitso's ability to process 10% of US-Mexico remittance flows while maintaining both crypto and traditional banking licenses demonstrates how regulatory compliance and technological innovation must converge for market leadership. This combination remains difficult for competitors to replicate quickly, particularly as regulatory requirements become more stringent across Latin American jurisdictions.

Ahmad's ecosystem development approach through The Push accelerator and partnership strategies reflects his recognition that platform companies enabling broader ecosystem growth may capture more value than individual application developers. As the stablecoin infrastructure market matures, sustainable competitive advantages will likely emerge from network effects rather than proprietary technology alone—a thesis informed by Ahmad's venture capital experience observing successful platform companies.

For institutional investors evaluating Latin American expansion strategies, Ahmad's experience suggests that regulatory and liquidity requirements for effective stablecoin infrastructure represent both significant barriers to entry and substantial opportunities for companies able to navigate the complexity successfully.

The convergence of traditional finance expertise with blockchain technology, embodied in Ahmad's own career transition, points toward broader institutional adoption as more executives recognize stablecoin infrastructure as complementary to, rather than competitive with, traditional financial systems.

See you next year!