By Ben Foldy
The founders of fintech startup Kontigo eagerly embraced the Silicon Valley playbook: packing the company into a San Francisco home for a TikTok-ready hackathon; peppering their pitches with buzzwords about building a "neobank for Latinos"; and making outlandish claims about pioneering a Martian economy.
The performance helped the tiny, boisterous cryptocurrency startup land a coveted slot in the prestigious incubator Y Combinator and, in December, raise more than $20 million from big-name Silicon Valley investors, including Coinbase's venture fund.
But the recent U.S. military action in Venezuela has put a spotlight on a controversial aspect of Kontigo's business: It became a conduit for moving money in and out of the heavily sanctioned Venezuelan economy.
Now, Kontigo is facing service cutoffs by banks and payment networks -- including JPMorgan Chase, Stripe and Bridge -- and fending off allegations that it has undisclosed ties to the now-deposed Maduro regime, which the company denies.
A spokesman for Kontigo declined to answer questions about the business, but said in a statement that the company is reviewing its practices.
"Kontigo is committed to expanding access to financial services to the underserved," the spokesman said. "We are conducting an internal review and will share updates as appropriate. We are committed to complying with U.S. laws, including U.S. sanctions, and we are evaluating existing sanctions procedures and protocols with a view to enhancing them where necessary."
Co-founded in 2023 by Venezuelan Jesus Castillo, who casts himself as a David on the verge of vanquishing the mainstream banking Goliaths, Kontigo says its 1.2 million users across Latin America and South America have moved over $1 billion through its platform. The app lets users exchange hard currency for dollar-pegged stablecoins so that users can make payments and interact with the traditional banking system.
Outside Venezuela, the company enticed investors by presenting itself as a platform for helping everyday Latin Americans facing hyperinflation. Inside the country, however, it became a route around American sanctions that sought to choke off key parts of the Maduro regime from the international financial system.
According to presentation slides from a December invite-only promotional event in Caracas for potential partners, an economist invited by Kontigo explained how the company's technology helped the Maduro regime evade U.S. sanctions on the country's oil exports and route the sale proceeds back into the country's economy in the form of cryptocurrency.
As sanctions have cut off Venezuela from traditional financial channels, the government increasingly turned to stablecoins to sell oil. The economist at the event showed how in the second half of last year, nearly 80% of the country's oil revenue came in the form of stablecoin payments. Those funds are then exchanged for bolivars through banks, informal trading counters and government-authorized crypto exchanges such as Kontigo.
"The crypto market to the rescue," read one slide.
For months, Kontigo offered users the ability to move money between U.S. bank accounts at JP Morgan Chase -- transactions that are largely barred by sanctions -- by routing them through an intermediary.
JPMorgan abruptly took steps to cut off the access late last year. Stripe, which Kontigo used to process payments and transactions, has cut off the company, according to people familiar with the matter.
When Kontigo struck a partnership with another financial firm it worked with in the U.S., Kontigo executives told the firm it had no operations on the ground in Venezuela, according to a person familiar with the matter. The partner recently took steps to end the Kontigo relationship, the person said.
A boisterous startup in the U.S.
Castillo co-founded Kontigo as a blockchain technology to address everyday financial problems in Venezuela, where hyperinflation and a lack of access to credit have made it hard for people to hold on to their savings. The platform allowed users to exchange bolivars for dollar-pegged stablecoins that were more likely to hold their value.
To U.S. investors, Castillo presented an image of his startup as a plucky band of striving immigrants with big dreams, and early investors said they were drawn to the vision of a platform to help the truly needy.
In promotional materials, the company said Castillo and his colleagues built the company while trading off overnight shifts driving for Uber to stay afloat as they worked to build a financial system fit for "multiplanetary abundance" and to avoid "exporting Earth's monetary and economic failures" to Mars.
In mid-2025, Kontigo began offering users access to free "virtual" U.S. bank accounts at JPMorgan, according to a promotional video posted on LinkedIn. The accounts were offered through another fintech startup, Checkbook, according to people familiar with the arrangement, and JPMorgan didn't have a banking relationship with Kontigo. Nonetheless, Kontigo used the Chase Bank brand in its advertising.
In December, just weeks before the surprise U.S. raid that toppled the Venezuelan leadership, Kontigo announced that it had raised $20 million from investors including Coinbase Ventures, Alumni Ventures and DST Capital.
Coinbase, Alumni and DST didn't respond to requests for comment.
After the fundraising, Castillo posted a video to LinkedIn touting what he called a "$23 million" Silicon Valley mansion where he and the company's seven-person staff could live without distraction to boost annual revenue to $100 million in 60 days.
"If you're not willing to move to San Francisco with all your team and lock into a house for as long as necessary, you're not serious enough, you don't want it as much as we do, and you're going to lose," Castillo said.
The fundraising coincided with a rebranding of the company's service as a way to give users anywhere in the world the ability to buy and sell dollar-pegged cryptocurrencies without providing identity documents, according to a promotional video.
"Jamie Dimon, we're coming for you," Castillo posted on LinkedIn, addressing the JPMorgan CEO and repeating his boast that he would build "the world's biggest bank."
A different message in Venezuela
In Venezuela, Kontigo operated through a license from the country's cryptocurrency regulator, Sunacrip, that allowed it to operate a crypto enterprise with the state's blessing. Kontigo's license was granted to a Venezuelan company called Oha Technology, and signed by Venezuela's minister of finance.
Kontigo has since appeared to distance itself from Oha, saying it works with "local actors" in all of their markets. But until recently, Kontigo's own website said it was licensed to operate by Sunacrip and listed Oha as its Venezuelan subsidiary. Castillo's personal webpage shows he was chief operating officer at a company called Oha AI. And in private group chat messages reviewed by The Wall Street Journal, Castillo celebrated receiving the Sunacrip license in January 2025 and shared the document.
At the invite-only promotional event in Caracas, company speakers highlighted the growing role of cryptocurrencies in the Venezuelan economy. Proceeds of sanctioned oil sales were received in stablecoins, economist Asdrúbal Oliveros told the audience, then filtered into licensed crypto platforms such as Kontigo and its rival Crixto.
Venezuelan Kontigo users could use the app to move funds to and from their Banco de Venezuela accounts, even though that bank is subject to sanctions by the U.S. Treasury Department.
A change in fortunes
Just a few weeks after announcing its fundraising success, Kontigo's fortunes began to turn.
In late December, the fact that Kontigo's access to JPMorgan had been cut off became public via an article in the Information.
A few days later, a U.S. military operation deposed President Nicolás Maduro. Shortly after, influential independent fintech journalist Jason Mikula wrote about the company, raising allegations that Kontigo had secret ties to one of Maduro's sons.
Kontigo went on the offensive.
When Sebastian Siemiatkowski, the CEO of payments platform Klarna, shared Mikula's post on X, Kontigo's official account wrote back that the company "will hold those who circulate these falsehoods accountable for the resulting harm to our business reputation."
Then Kontigo told users it was hacked, with 1,005 users losing a total of roughly $341,000. The company said it made users whole.
In a nine-minute video posted to social media on Jan. 12, Castillo said in Spanish that the platform was under attack by both hackers and critics, and denied that Kontigo had any connections to the Maduro regime.
"The reality is that Kontigo's success has been forged after years of hard work, resilience, and perseverance, without being anyone's son-in-law, nephew, or cousin," he said.
Still, the company has seemingly struggled to operate in light of the growing issues. Stripe and Bridge have cut off their relationship with Kontigo, according to people familiar with the matter, and users have reported that PayPal no longer processes payments on the app. Oha Technology's license from the Venezuelan crypto regulator expired on Jan. 8.
Kontigo's main public cryptocurrency wallet, which the company lists on its website to allow anyone to "audit," shows little to no activity in the past few days. While the wallet had seen weekly transaction volumes averaging hundreds of thousands of dollars over several months, since Jan. 19 the wallet has seen only a handful of transactions in and out of roughly $1 each passing through.
Write to Ben Foldy at ben.foldy@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
February 01, 2026 22:00 ET (03:00 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2026 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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