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.

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.

Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/Nhg752zddqM