Written by: Ben Foldy
Compiled by: Luffy, Foresight News
The founders of fintech startup Kontigo embraced Silicon Valley's playbook: moving the company into a San Francisco house, hosting hackathons tailored for TikTok virality; peppering pitch decks with buzzwords, proclaiming the goal of building a "new Latin American bank"; even boasting about pioneering the Martian economy.
This approach helped the small, brash crypto startup secure a spot in the elite Y Combinator incubator and raise over $20 million in December last year from prominent Silicon Valley investors like Coinbase Ventures.
But recent U.S. military action in Venezuela has thrust a highly contentious aspect of Kontigo's business into the spotlight: it has become a major channel for moving funds into and out of Venezuela's heavily sanctioned economy.
Kontigo is now facing service disruptions from banks and payment networks, including JPMorgan Chase, Stripe, and Bridge, while also contending with allegations of undisclosed ties to the ousted Maduro regime, which Kontigo denies.
A Kontigo spokesperson declined to answer questions about business specifics but said in a statement that the company is reviewing its operating model.
"Kontigo is committed to expanding financial access for underserved communities," the spokesperson said. "We are conducting an internal review and will provide updates at the appropriate time. We adhere to U.S. laws, including U.S. sanctions regulations, and are evaluating our existing sanctions compliance processes and mechanisms, making improvements where necessary."
Kontigo was co-founded in 2023 by Venezuelan Jesus Castillo, who cast himself as a "David" about to slay the Goliaths of mainstream banking. The company says its 1.2 million users across Latin and South America have moved over $1 billion through the platform. The app allows users to convert hard currency into dollar-pegged stablecoins, enabling payments and access to the traditional banking system.
Outside Venezuela, the company portrayed itself to investors as a platform helping ordinary Latin Americans facing hyperinflation. But inside Venezuela, it became a channel to circumvent U.S. sanctions designed to cut off key sectors of the Maduro regime from the international financial system.
According to a presentation by an economist invited by Kontigo at an invite-only partner meeting in Caracas last December, the company's technology was described as helping the Maduro regime evade U.S. sanctions on the country's oil exports and repatriate oil sales revenue into the domestic economy in the form of cryptocurrency.
As sanctions severed Venezuela's traditional financial channels, the government increasingly relied on stablecoins for oil sales. The economist presented that in the second half of last year, nearly 80% of the country's oil revenue was received as stablecoin payments. These funds were then converted into bolivars through banks, informal exchange counters, and government-authorized crypto exchanges like Kontigo.
One slide read: "The crypto market to the rescue."
For months, Kontigo provided users, through intermediaries, with the ability to transfer funds between U.S. bank accounts at JPMorgan Chase, transactions largely prohibited by sanctions.
Late last year, JPMorgan Chase abruptly moved to cut off this channel. According to people familiar with the matter, Stripe, which had handled payments and transactions for Kontigo, has also terminated its relationship with the company.
When Kontigo struck a deal with another U.S. partner financial institution, company executives told them it had no physical operations within Venezuela, said people familiar with the matter. That partner has recently taken steps to end its relationship with Kontigo.
Venezuela turns to stablecoins for oil sales under U.S. sanctions
In the U.S.: A High-Profile, Brash Startup
Castillo co-founded Kontigo with the aim of using blockchain technology to solve Venezuela's everyday financial struggles, where hyperinflation and a lack of credit make it difficult for people to preserve savings. The platform allows users to convert bolivars into more stable, dollar-pegged stablecoins.
To U.S. investors, Castillo packaged his startup as a team of immigrants with big dreams fighting against the odds. Early investors said they were drawn to the vision of helping people in genuine need.
In promotional materials, the company said Castillo and colleagues took turns driving Uber on night shifts to make ends meet while building the company, dedicated to creating a financial system fit for a "multi-planetary age of abundance" and avoiding "exporting Earth's monetary and economic failures to Mars."
Around mid-2025, according to a promotional video posted on LinkedIn, Kontigo began offering users free "virtual" U.S. bank accounts with JPMorgan Chase. People familiar with the matter said these accounts were provided through another fintech startup, Checkbook, and that JPMorgan had no direct banking relationship with Kontigo. Nonetheless, Kontigo used the Chase bank brand logo in its advertisements.
In December, just weeks before the U.S. raid that ousted the Maduro regime, Kontigo announced it had raised $20 million from investors including Coinbase Ventures, Alumni Ventures, and DST Capital. Coinbase, Alumni, and DST did not respond to requests for comment.
Following the funding round, Castillo posted a video on LinkedIn boasting about what he called a "$23 million" Silicon Valley mansion where he and his 7-person team would live, free from distractions, aiming to increase annual revenue to $100 million within 60 days.
"If you're not willing to move the whole team to San Francisco, lock yourselves in a house until the goal is achieved, then you're not serious enough, you don't want success as badly as we do, you're destined to fail," Castillo said.
According to a promotional video, the funding coincided with a rebranding of the service, with Kontigo claiming to allow any user globally to buy and sell dollar-pegged cryptocurrencies without providing identification documents.
"Jamie Dimon, we're coming," Castillo posted on LinkedIn, calling out the JPMorgan Chase CEO and again boasting about building the "world's largest bank."
A large screen displaying the Kontigo cryptocurrency app interface, showing a balance of $5000 and transaction history
Inside Venezuela: A Different Story
In Venezuela, Kontigo operates under a license issued by the country's crypto regulator, Sunacrip, granting government permission to conduct crypto business. The license was awarded to a Venezuelan company named Oha Technology, signed by the Venezuelan finance minister.
Kontigo has since seemed to try to distance itself from Oha, saying it works with local institutions in all its markets. But until recently, Kontigo's website still showed it held an operating license issued by Sunacrip and listed Oha as its Venezuelan subsidiary. Castillo's personal webpage showed he had served as Chief Operating Officer of Oha AI. And in private group chat messages seen by The Wall Street Journal, Castillo celebrated obtaining the Sunacrip license in January 2025 and shared the license document.
At that invite-only presentation in Caracas, the company spokesperson emphasized the growing role of cryptocurrency in the Venezuelan economy. Economist Asdrúbal Oliveros told the audience that revenue from sanctioned oil sales was received in stablecoins and then flowed into licensed crypto platforms like Kontigo and its competitor Crixto.
Venezuelan Kontigo users can use the app to transfer money to their Venezuelan bank accounts, even if that bank is sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury.
A Turn of Fortune
Just weeks after announcing its successful funding, Kontigo's situation began to deteriorate rapidly.
In late December, an article in The Information exposed the news that Kontigo had been cut off by JPMorgan Chase.
Days later, U.S. military action ousted President Maduro. Shortly after, influential independent fintech journalist Jason Mikula wrote about the company, alleging secret links between Kontigo and a son of Maduro.
Kontigo quickly fought back.
When Klarna CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski shared Mikula's article on platform X, the official Kontigo account replied that the company "will hold those spreading this false information accountable for the damage caused to the company's commercial reputation."
Subsequently, Kontigo informed users that the platform had suffered a hack, with 1,005 users losing a total of approximately $341,000. The company said it had fully compensated users for their losses.
In a 9-minute video posted on social media on January 12th, Castillo, speaking in Spanish, said the platform was under attack from both hackers and critics and denied any connection between Kontigo and the Maduro regime.
"The truth is, Kontigo's success is the result of years of effort, resilience, and persistence. We are not anyone's son-in-law, nephew, or cousin," he said.
Nevertheless, as problems mounted, the company's operations seemed to struggle. According to people familiar with the matter, Stripe and Bridge have terminated their partnerships with Kontigo, and users reported that PayPal no longer processes payments for the app. The Venezuelan crypto regulatory license held by Oha Technology expired on January 8th.
Kontigo's main public crypto wallet, listed on its website, has seen almost no transaction activity in recent days. For months prior, the wallet handled weekly transaction volumes in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, but since January 19th, only a few transactions of around $1 each have moved in and out.
