USD stablecoin liquidity - now solved for emerging markets!

Opportunity

Emerging markets have an insatiable appetite for dollars that goes unfulfilled. Dollars that could be used to hedge against local inflation and currency volatility, or for international commerce. Local regulatory barriers, such as limits on holding physical dollars, restrictions on USD accounts or other currency controls reduce access and leave an unmet demand. Local peer-to-peer markets existed to trade the local currency for physical dollars and this is being replicated by the cryptocurrency industry for efficiency, specifically with stablecoins that are pegged to fiat currencies. The emerging market holdings of USD stablecoins is reaching 200 billion, with 10x projected latent demand*. (*S&P Global Ratings, January 20, 2026)

Product

Fax is the stablecoin gateway for foreign currency arbitrage and dollar access. Stablecoins are accessible 24/7 and can be freely moved across international borders and between different services. When paired with instant and free ramping services, fiat-pegged stablecoins are global money that doesn’t have the antiquated limitations of banking hours, transaction limits, or the delays and fees of the correspondent banking system. They’re optimal for foreign exchange and global dollar access, for trading, holding and spending across borders.

Access to USD stablecoins outside of the US is best served first by using stablecoins pegged to the local currencies, rather than buying the USD stablecoins directly from a provider or peer. The reason for this is that the local stablecoin issuers are financially motivated to bring people onchain and therefore offer the best fiat-to-crypto ramping solutions, for free. With onchain FX, the swap to a USD stablecoin is instant, low fee and can achieve good FX rates with sufficient liquidity. However, this is not available in all markets and large peer-to-peer apps such as Binance and Bybit facilitate USD stablecoin purchases directly for those that are able to navigate these apps. Fax offers a different solution, whereas it uses the liquidity of remittances and communication services such as WhatsApp to enable USD stablecoin access for traders. There are three parties involved; a remittance sender, a crypto trader, and a remittance receiver. All three communicate to facilitate the transfers and provide transaction proofs. Fax is used as the onramp and swap tool that the trader uses to buy local currency from the remittance sender and swap to USDC. The trader sends the desired currency to the remittance receiver to complete the cycle. Our escrow, which was built for instant pay-outs, will be adapted to this to prevent man-in-the-middle scams.

Progress

This system has enabled Fax to offer its first arbitrage opportunity between the Brazilian Real (BRL) and the Angolan Kwanza (AOA). Traders use the built-in onramp to pull BRL directly from Brazilian bank accounts, landing in their accounts as a Brazilian stablecoin. This stablecoin is swapped for USDC, which is then available for spending overseas via QR-code payouts or crypto debit cards. In Angola, the USDC can also be sold in the P2P market at a profit. Known parties are working together between Brazil and Angola to facilitate this process. This is one of several arbitrage opportunities that can be served using access to local ramps and stablecoins, stablecoin swap services and P2P markets. It's better than P2P tools that can't do cross-border arbitrage, while also being cheaper than those that can. With liquidity, internal automation and bringing the communication in-app, it can be scaled up significantly.

Fax’s stablecoin onramping service went live at the beginning of January and we started to work with the Angolan traders in February for the arbitrage.

In nine weeks ~30 traders have put through 2 million Brazilian Reals (400k USD).

This is only a test portion of the group, with the volume continually increasing as the traders gain trust in Fax. The limitation now is BRL liquidity to do the onramping to BRZ, and BRZ liquidity to do the swap to USDC. The opportunity is available to capture the Angolan diaspora in Brazil and carry that into other markets, whereas 2% of the Angolan population lives abroad, with 33% in the EU**. Other African markets, such as Malawi and Ghana have been identified as similar opportunities. The existing clients want access to the Euro and there are integration options available to facilitate this in the same way as Fax is doing it in Brazil. (**Mundo Lusíada, November 18, 2025)

History

Fax is the evolution of Emigro, a cross-border travel payments company specializing in instant fiat payments from stablecoins. Emigro supports Pix payouts in Brazil and has the model to spread to other countries with QR code instant payment systems.

Emigro has processed nearly 200 thousand BRL of Pix payments since launching in July of 2025.

The transition to Fax brings a higher-volume product, while still offering consumer payment features. The new Fax customer base wants USDT and a Visa debit card as well, with both added to the roadmap. Rather than continuing to struggle in the crowded crypto neobank field, Fax is going after the low-CAC / high-LTV dollar access opportunity that local stablecoins enable, while the others focus on USDC/USDT payments only. This allows Fax to get to sustainability quicker, while still being able to offer the neobank features to a built-in customer base that is profiting from a different part of the product. Fax will outlast many of the VC-funded neobanks that are all fighting over the same crypto-native users by offering their treasuries as incentives.

Team

Blake Sieders, Founder and CEO

I've had a long and winding career as a generalist. I started as a Mechanical Engineering Technologist working in the automotive manufacturing industry, designing and supporting industrial automated systems for making automobile parts. Next, I became certified as a project manager and worked in the mining equipment industry. Through a family connection I got into the migration industry and opened my own licensed consultancy. Seeing the inefficiencies there I decided to apply technology and that's how I got started in software tech startups, hence the brand name Emigro. I had some success with a product there but the pandemic slowed the industry and I moved to web3. I've design projects on Avalanche ($40k hackathon prize), Stellar ($180k grants) and Base - with Solana as the next frontier. Each chain was chosen for it's focus at the time and how that could advance the project. The Solana consumer focus is unmatched and why we're here with Fax.

https://x.com/BlakeSieders

Emerson Kanazawa, Lead Engineer

Emerson built the Emigro/Fax product from the beginning. The architecture, engineering, design, security and implementation are all his work. This includes the Circle wallet integration, custom swap protocol, escrow, Transfero Pix API and much more. What Fax needs going forward is more capacity to accelerate growth. Lately he's been dabbling in autonomous AI agents, further increasing his expertise.

https://x.com/cpongl

Post-Raise

The most urgent matter is to increase liquidity for BRL/BRZ swaps and BRZ/USDC swaps so that the existing customer base can have the limitations removed that have been slowing growth. There's no need to spend money trying to attract this part of the market, only open the floodgates for them.

Solana and USDT integrations are next, which are within the abilities of our Circle wallet integration and what the customers are asking for.

The full rebrand to Fax and relaunch will be completed.

Another Pix API implementation, with an additional BRL stablecoin issuer is necessary for redundancy to ensure we don't have downtime.

Access to the Euro is a customer request that will require a SEPA API integration, with EURe by Monerium being the likely stablecoin candidate as they also offer the IBAN accounts. Mykobo, a distributor of EURC is another option.

Other stablecoin issuers that have APIs that we'll target in the near-term are:

Twin/Belo - ARGt, BRAt, COLt, MEXt, PERt, CHLt, BOLt

Minteo - COPM, MXNM, CLPM, PENM

Paytrie/Loon - CADC

Tokenised GBP - tGBP

The target is to use the funds to grow and diversify sufficiently to be ready for a pre-seed round in the first quarter of 2027. Support our journey and watch us grow into a premier cross-border payment product.