Zubair Habib Timilehin is the founder and chief executive officer of Bitoshi, a fintech startup building infrastructure that makes digital assets and stablecoins practical for everyday payments across Africa. Under his leadership, the company has grown to serve nearly 100,000 users, delivering financial solutions that bridge traditional finance and blockchain technology while enabling individuals and businesses to participate in Africa's digital economy. Bitoshi's growth comes amid rising stablecoin adoption across the continent, where dollar-pegged digital assets have increasingly been used as a hedge against local currency depreciation and as a tool for cross-border payments that traditional banking corridors often make slow and costly.

With a background in product strategy, product development, and growth, Zubair has led the creation of user-centric financial products designed to simplify cryptocurrency adoption and expand access to digital finance across emerging markets. His work is driven by a commitment to removing barriers to financial inclusion through practical innovation, with a particular focus on the future of digital payments, stablecoins, and blockchain-powered financial infrastructure in Africa—a region consistently ranked among the world's fastest-growing for grassroots cryptocurrency adoption.

Explain your job to a five-year-old.

Imagine you have two toys. One is really fun, but every time you want to play with it, you have to read a big instruction manual first. The other is so simple that you can pick it up, start playing straight away, and discover all the fun things it can do on your own.

My job is to help build money tools that feel like the second toy. I want people to be able to send, save, and use their money—whether it's cash or digital—without needing to think about the technology behind it. If we've done our job well, people won't think about how it works; they'll simply know it works.

Why are you bullish about merging traditional finance (TradFi) and blockchain technology? What will that change about how we use financial products today?

I'm bullish on the merging of traditional finance and blockchain because I don't think the future of finance is choosing one over the other. It's combining the strengths of both.

Traditional finance has built trust, regulatory frameworks, and products that billions of people rely on. Blockchain brings global accessibility, user ownership, and the ability to move value instantly at a fraction of today's cost.

I believe we're moving toward a future where people won't choose between "banking" and "crypto." They'll simply choose the best financial experience. The technology powering that experience will become invisible.

Just as most people don't know whether a website runs on Amazon Web Services (AWS) or Google Cloud, future users won't care whether a payment runs on a bank's rails or a blockchain. They'll care that it's instant, affordable, secure, and works anywhere in the world.

That vision is what we're building at Bitoshi. By combining the familiarity and trust of traditional finance with the speed and accessibility of blockchain technology, we're creating financial experiences that feel effortless for everyday users.

Blockchain isn't replacing finance. It's becoming the infrastructure that makes finance more open, more efficient, and more accessible.

What's the hardest part of being a founder in the digital asset space that people outside crypto don't understand?

I think the hardest part is building in an industry that's evolving in real time.

The technology moves incredibly fast. New blockchain networks and upgrades, security standards, and infrastructure are constantly emerging, so you're always learning. What was considered best practice a year ago may no longer be the best approach today.

But the bigger challenge is trust. Digital assets have unfortunately been associated with scams and bad actors over the years. As a result, legitimate businesses have to work twice as hard to earn customer trust and maintain regulatory compliance. In African markets, that trust-building is especially critical, as regulators continue to refine their approaches to digital assets—Nigeria's central bank lifted its restriction on crypto-related banking transactions in late 2023, signaling a shift toward structured oversight rather than prohibition.

You're not just building a great product. You're building a secure, compliant, and trustworthy business in an industry that's still maturing. That's a challenge most people outside the space don't fully appreciate.

If being a crypto startup founder was a warning label, what would it read?

Don't get too comfortable. Expect the best, but always prepare for the worst.

You said Bitoshi bridges traditional finance and blockchain for nearly 100,000 users. What was your hack for achieving that scale?

The biggest driver of our growth has been word of mouth. We never set out to build a product that people would talk about; we simply set out to solve the complication and fragmentation of cryptocurrency transactions.

By staying focused on solving a real problem and delivering a seamless user experience, people naturally began recommending Bitoshi to their friends, family, and colleagues. That organic advocacy has been our biggest growth hack.

I've always believed the best marketing isn't advertising; it's building something people genuinely want to tell others about.

What's one product-building lesson you learned the hard way?

I lost about ₦4 million ($3,000) in the early stages of Bitoshi because I didn't pay attention to a little tiny detail about the product. I quickly learned that I needed to live and breathe the product, especially in the early stage, since we didn't have much of a team in the beginning. Even though it's not the same case now, as I no longer have to be involved in the nitty-gritty of building, in the beginning it was important, and I learnt that the hard way.

What's one skill every aspiring founder should develop before starting a company?

I think every aspiring founder should develop strong problem-solving skills.

And I'm not just talking about solving a customer problem with a product. I'm talking about solving the countless problems that come with building a business.

Every founder will face challenges, whether it's funding, regulation, hiring, technology, or acquiring customers. The difference is that successful founders don't see those challenges as dead ends; they see them as problems waiting to be solved.

You have to build with the mindset that every problem has a solution. It may not be obvious, and it may require you to rethink your approach, but there's almost always a way forward.

Many founders don't fail because their idea wasn't good. They fail because they gave up when they encountered the first major obstacle.