Mexico is one of the largest remittance partners of the US with the majority of migrant Mexican workers sending most of their salaries back to Mexico to their families. According to the World Bank, three of the most frequently used remittance service companies – Western Union, MoneyGram, CitiBank charge 9.11 per cent on average, excluding the conversion fees.
This announcement inspired Bitso, the largest Bitcoin to Mexican Peso exchange in Mexico, to launch their funding round on the online investment platform BnkToTheFuture. BitSo built a solution that uses the digital currency Bitcoin and an integration with the Mexican Central Bank to allow Mexicans to freely trade their dollars and mexican pesos in and out of Bitcoin. The timing of Trump’s announcement increased the need for Bitso’s offering and has already attracted over $1.85 million of investment.
Trump wrote on his official presidential campaign website: “Mexico continues to make billions on not only our bad trade deals but also relies heavily on the billions of dollars in remittances sent from illegal immigrants in the United States back to Mexico ($22 billion in 2013 alone) […] Mexico must pay for the wall and, until they do, the United States will, among other things: impound all remittance payments derived from illegal wages.”
Simon Dixon, CEO of BnkToTheFuture.com, the online investment platform hosting the Bitso funding round stated “Investors have been enthusiastically investing as the global digital currency Bitcoin has found a very interesting user case in Mexico now and Bitso are one of the only Bitcoin companies in the world with a direct integration to the bank clearing system that allows them to clear funds between Mexico and the world in seconds at a fraction of the cost of traditional remittance firms.”
Bitso CEO Pablo Gonzalez states “Mexico is home to the endpoint of the largest remittance corridor in the world, with a flow of over $25.4 billion in 2015. We believe that Mexicans should be able to send their money back home and Bitcoin is fast becoming a cheaper and faster way to do that as our platform volume increases. We feel making money flow freely is a great innovation that should not be hindered by traditional currency wars”
