Latin American Crypto Exchange Bitso Hires New Brazil Chief

The executive once had leadership roles at Citibank and HSBC.

Apr 18, 2022 at 8:45 p.m. UTC

Updated Apr 18, 2022 at 9:27 p.m. UTC

Thales Araújo de Freitas, the new country manager of Bitso's Brazil operation. (Bitso)

Andrés Engler is a CoinDesk editor based in Argentina, where he covers the Latin American crypto ecosystem. He holds BTC and ETH.

Follow @andresengler on Twitter

Latin American crypto exchange Bitso has named Thales Araújo de Freitas country manager of its Brazil operation, the company announced Monday.

Before joining Bitso, Araujo de Freitas served as Brazil country manager at Global66, a Chile-based international money transfer platform. He previously held leadership roles at Citibank and HSBC.
Bitso wants to become the largest crypto exchange in Brazil by the end of 2022, the company told CoinDesk recently. That would put it in competition with current leader Mercado Bitcoin, which has more than 3.2 million users and is in talks for a sale to crypto exchange Coinbase Global (COIN).
In the last six months, Bitso has doubled its user base in Brazil, Araújo de Freitas told CoinDesk in a written statement.
Bitso plans to hire more people in Brazil and enable the purchase of soccer tickets with crypto there, Araújo de Freitas said.
The company also offers Bitso Alpha, a professional trading platform, and Bitso Business for corporate users.
The exchange has more than 4 million users in Mexico, Brazil, Argentina and Colombia, the company said.
In August, Bitso hired Facebook veteran Vaughan Smith as its first chief operating officer to boost the company’s expansion in Brazil.

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