Bipa: Brazilian Bitcoin neobank
Role
Head of Marketing
Timeline
2025
Location
São Paulo, Brazil / Miami, FL
Overview
Bipa is a Brazilian neobank, backed by Ego Death Capital, that lets customers use Bitcoin and US dollar stablecoins in their everyday finances. When I joined as Head of Marketing in 2025, the team was stuck reacting to requests, and too few verified customers ever bought Bitcoin. A small group of customers also drove most of the revenue.
I built the team first, then pointed it at the customers who drove revenue. The share of sign-ups making a first trade rose by over 30%, and marketing costs fell 70%. We also rebuilt the brand and launched a Bitcoin-backed credit card.
Structure before campaigns
I gave each person one clear area to own, because overlapping roles were slowing every project.
Isabela Tamiris led brand design and project management.
Caio Leta led Bitcoin research and content, including our podcast, newsletter and reports.
Seiiti Arata ran influencer and user-generated content campaigns.
Maria Fernanda Luz ran lifecycle marketing, turning sign-ups into first trades.
A team self-assessment showed two gaps, programmatic advertising (automated ad buying) and attribution (tracking which channels bring in customers). We filled both by hiring João Pedro Calixto as a growth marketer.
Isabela and I also replaced ad-hoc requests with a Definition of Ready. No project entered the workflow until it had these six things:
A clear objective that defines success
The business reason behind it
A realistic timeline with milestones
Measurable success metrics
The resources it needs
A priority level, from P0 (highest) to P2
A matching Definition of Done closed each project. A project was done only after we finished every task, compiled the results and held a retrospective.
Follow the money
Next, we put the team’s effort and budget where they paid off.
Automated onboarding. We built email and push messages triggered by each customer’s actions, guiding them from sign-up to first deposit and first trade. The share of sign-ups making a first trade rose by over 30%.
Cut wasted spend. We ended influencer deals with poor results and dropped a PR agency that earned little coverage. We also paused programmatic campaigns that would take more than a year to pay back. Costs fell 70% with no loss of capacity or revenue.
Targeted high-value customers. Our data showed that high-net-worth individuals and companies drove most of our revenue. So we put more marketing behind Bipa Premium, our high-touch service, and Bipa Business Accounts. This shift was our biggest breakthrough.
Fixed attribution. We set up AppsFlyer, a tool that shows which marketing channel brought in each app user. Knowing where our best customers came from let us spend with confidence.
Rebrand around everyday use
Bipa works more like a personal finance app than a trading platform, so the brand had to present Bitcoin and USDT, Tether’s dollar stablecoin, as everyday money.
We built a fresh design system from the gradients in Bipa’s logo. Our main line became “Conheça o melhor jeito de comprar, vender e viver com Bitcoin” (Discover the best way to buy, sell and live on Bitcoin). The design and message launched first on a rebuilt website and updated app store listings.
On social media, ad-hoc posting had produced mixed messages and an irregular schedule. We set four content themes: Bitcoin education, product demos, brand moments and market news. Then we planned posts in two-week cycles in VistaSocial, a scheduling tool, for Instagram, X, LinkedIn and TikTok. A freelance designer helped us produce more content while staying on brand.
We also moved BipaCast, our podcast, into a professional studio. Better production helped us book high-profile guests such as Pedro Guerra, chief of staff to Brazil’s Vice President Geraldo Alckmin.
Ads alone could not make Bitcoin feel like everyday money, so we showed people actually spending it. Seiiti Arata led “Eu uso Bitcoin” (I use Bitcoin), a multi-month campaign with creators from Brazil’s Bitcoin community. Each short video showed someone using Bitcoin through Bipa to buy coffee, pay bills or send money to a friend. The videos drew dozens of comments each on Instagram and X, because they showed uses that exist today.
Education drove card adoption
I led the launch of Bipa’s Bitcoin-backed credit card to more than 70,000 waitlisted customers. It paid 1% back in Bitcoin, and cardholders could add Bitcoin or USDT as collateral to raise their limit. That let them spend in Brazilian reais while keeping their Bitcoin and dollar exposure.
The beta revealed a problem. Many customers created a card but never added collateral, so they missed the card’s main benefit.
We rewrote the card’s lifecycle messages to walk customers through collateral step by step. They also explained that Bitcoin has tended to gain value while inflation erodes the Brazilian real. As a result, the share of activated cards with collateral rose by over 40%.
Bitcoin can serve emerging markets
Bipa showed that a company can build everyday Bitcoin products in an emerging market. That matters most where people need an alternative to a currency that keeps losing value. As regulation becomes clearer, I believe Bitcoin and stablecoins can become a preferred way to save in markets like Brazil.