In this episode of The Smart Economy Podcast, host Dylan Grabowski is joined by Maciej Cepnik, chief marketing officer at Aureo, a Bitcoin-focused financial services company serving individuals and businesses in Mexico. They discuss why Bitcoin investing and corporate adoption remain early in the country, how Aureo grew from a tool its founders built for themselves into a non-custodial brokerage, and why Mexico’s regulatory and banking friction may create an advantage for teams that can successfully work through it.
What you’ll learn:
- Why Aureo uses “direct to wallet” and “direct to bank” flows instead of holding customer assets
- How Mexico’s regulatory environment creates significant barriers for Bitcoin startups
- Why Aureo is expanding its focus toward corporate accounts, APIs, and larger-volume clients
- How Mexico’s preference for real estate as an investment shapes the challenge of Bitcoin adoption
- Why Cepnik sees Bitcoin primarily as independent, censorship-resistant money rather than a mainstream payment product
- How a $1.1 million pre-seed round helped Aureo rethink its retail-first strategy and positioning
- Why building resilient liquidity and banking relationships could unlock larger Bitcoin transactions in Mexico
- What Bitcoin’s BIP 110 debate revealed about governance, network consensus, and Bitcoin culture
- And much more!
Maciej Cepnik is the chief marketing officer at Aureo and a longtime Bitcoin entrepreneur whose involvement with the industry began in Montreal in 2015. After initially approaching crypto as an investment, he became involved with Montreal’s Bitcoin community, helped organize meetups, worked on Bitcoin mining and self-custody initiatives, and later joined Bitrefill. After relocating to Mexico, Cepnik and his co-founders encountered a practical problem firsthand: earning Bitcoin was easy, but converting it efficiently into Mexican pesos was not. That experience ultimately helped inspire what became Aureo. Today, the company is developing Bitcoin infrastructure around direct-to-wallet purchases, direct-to-bank sales, and an expanding suite of services for businesses and larger investors. Cepnik’s experience as both a Bitcoin user and entrepreneur on the ground in Mexico offers a useful perspective on where Bitcoin’s ideology meets the realities of regulation, financial infrastructure, and adoption in Latin America.
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About The Author: Arthur Bone
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