🇦🇷 What We Learned From Nexo Acquiring Buenbit — A Conversation With the CEO

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🗣️ A Conversation with Buenbit’s CEO

On December 11 2025, global crypto lender Nexo made headlines by acquiring Buenbit, a leading Argentine crypto platform. This deal brought over 1M Buenbit users under Nexo’s umbrella and folded in Buenbit’s operations across Argentina, Peru, and Mexico. 

For Nexo, which manages around $11B in assets, the acquisition was a strategic springboard into Latin America’s booming crypto market. 

For Buenbit, it marked the culmination of an eight-year journey from startup to a regional player. 

To further understand the implications of the acquisition, we spoke with Federico Ogue, Buenbit’s co-founder and CEO. He shared candid insights on why the acquisition happened, the state of Argentina’s crypto exchange landscape, the coming wave of consolidation, and the hard truths of building a crypto company. 

Below, we unpack everything we learned from the conversation.

Which is also available here for you to watch.

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🤝 On Why Nexo Acquired Buenbit, And Why Buenbit Said Yes

The first part is simple. Nexo sought a rapid expansion into Latin America, one of the world’s fastest-growing digital asset markets, Argentina in particular. 

With inflation soaring above 200% in recent years, crypto adoption in the country has surged as people seek stable stores of value. In fact, Argentina now has one of the highest crypto penetration rates globally, with roughly 20% of Argentines owning or using cryptocurrency. 

Yes, this environment makes Argentina a fertile ground for crypto services, but it also demands deep local know-how and regulatory footing. 

Which is exactly what Buenbit offered,  a CNV-registered (Argentine securities regulator) exchange with a strong local reputation, having processed over $2B in crypto volume since its founding.

From Fede Ogue’s perspective, the acquisition made perfect sense on both sides. Nexo had enjoyed strong growth in 2024–25 and was eager to “grow in LatAm and Argentina”, but realized they did not have the time or team to do it locally. Rather than building from scratch in a complex market, Nexo opted to buy a ready-made platform. 

Buenbit fit the bill because its product offering and target clientele were closely aligned with Nexo’s. Both companies emphasize a secure, professional crypto experience tailored to serious investors, and Buenbit was also just the right size. At the time of acquisition it had a lean team of 75 people supporting its million-strong user base, meaning it was large enough to matter but small enough to integrate smoothly.

By acquiring Buenbit, Nexo gains much needed local insights and Buenos Aires as a new regional hub, while Buenbit’s users gain access to Nexo’s broader suite of services. The combination effectively merges Nexo’s liquidity and product breadth with Buenbit’s local credibility. 

A match made in heaven.

🏟️ On Argentina’s Crowded Crypto Exchange Landscape

Our conversation with Fede turned to the state of Argentina’s crypto exchange market, which set the stage for why consolidation, like the Nexo-Buenbit deal, was almost inevitable. Argentina’s crypto scene is remarkably crowded. By Fede’s count, there are around 15 relevant crypto exchanges operating in the country. 

These include 5–6 medium to large exchanges that compete head-to-head, plus numerous smaller platforms carving out niches. International heavyweights are also in the mix (Coinbase, Binance, etc.), while at the same time traditional financial institutions are starting to offer crypto trading, and major fintech players are gearing up to enable services.

In short, Argentine consumers have no shortage of options for buying and selling digital assets. 

Fede described the situation bluntly: “Lots of big players doing the same, and smaller players doing more with AI… Everyone is waiting for the next wave of crypto growth but we haven’t seen it yet. It’s a very difficult situation.” 

User growth has plateaued during the recent bear market, and all the exchanges are fighting over a finite pool of active traders. This hyper-competitive landscape, while fostering innovation, also presages consolidation; there are simply too many platforms offering similar services in a relatively small market. 

Argentina’s entire population is 46M, and if roughly 20% engage with crypto, that’s around 9M users divided among more than a dozen exchanges. The market fragmentation is unsustainable in the long run, especially as profit margins tighten during crypto downturns.

🛒 On More Crypto M&A on the Horizon

We floated our Frontera 2026 prediction (here are 8 more if you'd like) that this year we will see at least three major Latin American crypto companies acquired, and Fede agreed this is likely. He anticipates a couple more acquisitions in the next few months alone, provided the macroeconomic context remains stable (gulp). 

His reasoning is the same logic that shows up in Argentina’s exchange snapshot, consolidation.  

It doesn’t make sense to have 15 companies doing the same thing. Smaller players are running into a wall where differentiation gets harder and the cost of staying credible keeps rising. Selling here becomes a successful outcome, and for the buyers it becomes the fastest route to enter a market with local leverage.

Beyond exchanges, Fede sees opportunity in acquiring crypto infrastructure companies. When asked what other verticals might attract international buyers, he highlighted companies building ramp infrastructure in LatAm, likening them to Bridge and BVNK. 

These are B2B services that provide fiat-to-crypto on-ramps and off-ramps, compliance solutions, and liquidity pipelines for other fintechs and crypto platforms. In Latin America, navigating fiat currency conversions and banking relationships can be extremely complex due to regulatory fragmentation and capital controls. 

A startup that has mastered, say, connecting Colombian pesos or Argentine pesos into the crypto ecosystem could be very valuable to a bigger exchange or crypto company lacking that local capability. 

He who controls the spice controls the universe.

🎯 On Finding the Right Fit in an Acquisition

How did Buenbit know that Nexo was the right acquirer, and what can other startups learn about recognizing a good fit? 

Fede admitted that Buenbit had always looked up to Nexo, in fact, Nexo was something of a benchmark (and a friendly rival) for Buenbit’s team. One of Buenbit’s core offerings is a crypto earn account where users deposit stablecoins and earn interest. For years, Nexo set the gold standard in that arena, offering yields of 8–9% on stablecoin deposits globally. Buenbit, as a smaller player, struggled to match those attractive rates. 

“We always said, how can we compete with Nexo?” Fede recalls. The reality was, Nexo could pay such high yields because it had its own robust loan book, lending assets to their own customers, while Buenbit and many others had to rely on lower paying DeFi protocols for returns.

Being acquired by a larger company that excels in areas where your startup is weaker can be a win-win. In Buenbit’s case, integration with Nexo means its customers will soon access far higher interest rates on their stablecoins, backed by Nexo’s global lending operations, apart from stronger infrastructure and a broader product menu. 

The lesson for founders contemplating acquisitions is that cultural and strategic alignment matters as much as the price tag. Buenbit and Nexo shared a vision of making crypto safe and accessible while sitting on the forefront of innovation, it was essentially a smaller mirror of Nexo’s approach in a local market which helped with integration and negotiation.

🧗‍♂️ On The Hard Truths of Being a Founder

Amid the celebration of a successful exit, Fede was quick to point out that founding a startup is anything but glamorous. Shortly after announcing Buenbit’s sale to Nexo, he wrote an essay about the less talked-about struggles of being a founder (read it here).

“The point was showing this is not romanticized,” he said of his essay, “to share the realistic image of what it is to build a startup.” From the outside, entrepreneurial stories often get polished into fairy tales of innovation and wealth. Fede wanted to peel back that veneer and speak honestly about the emotional and mental toll the journey takes.

“You have to be resilient. Most of the time you’re solving problems,” he told us. Founding turns into an endless loop of problem-solving, and the founder is the one who cannot look away. The hardest part is not any single crisis. It is the accumulation, the repetition, the responsibility that keeps returning with a new mask. 

And sometimes there is nothing else to do than to weather the storm.

Yet, Fede expresses gratitude for the experience. He’s not sugar-coating the tough parts, but he believes overcoming them made him a stronger person and a better entrepreneur. He refers to this as the “other side of the same coin”, the idea that the very difficulties that make the journey painful are what also make the success meaningful.

After a lonely 8-year journey filled with multiple close calls and psychological strain, he has walked out as a different man. A better man, through the road less traveled by, which is not for everyone.

🕯️ On Finding Motivation

As we wrapped up our conversation, we asked Fede what keeps him going. His answer surprised me.

He said there isn’t a particular thing he looks for as motivation. To me, that translates to something rarer and more durable. 

He does it for the love of the game.

It is the ultimate source of improvement. Wanting to become better. Seeking greatness, just for the sake of it. Personally, that's part of why I am here today too, and it deserves my respect.

If you want to watch the full interview with Fede, check it out here.