Wences Casares

Current Company

Xapo Bank — Founder & CEO

Argentina's First Internet Entrepreneur

Wences Casares grew up on a sheep ranch in Patagonia, Argentina, far from the centers of global technology. Despite the remote upbringing, he founded Argentina's first internet service provider as a teenager and went on to create Patagon, an online brokerage that became the leading financial portal in Latin America. He sold Patagon to Banco Santander for $750 million in 2000 — one of the largest internet exits in Latin American history.

After Patagon, Casares founded several ventures in mobile payments and digital finance before discovering Bitcoin in 2011. He became one of the cryptocurrency's earliest and most vocal evangelists in Silicon Valley, personally introducing Bitcoin to some of the most powerful executives and investors in the technology industry.

Building the Bank for a Bitcoin World

Casares founded Xapo in 2013 as a Bitcoin wallet and custody service, eventually expanding it into Xapo Bank — a full-service digital bank that combines traditional banking with Bitcoin custody. Xapo stores Bitcoin in underground vaults on multiple continents and serves clients in over 100 countries.

As Founder and CEO of Xapo Bank, Casares sits at the intersection of traditional finance and the emerging digital asset economy. His journey from a sheep ranch in Patagonia to the forefront of global fintech embodies the kind of entrepreneurial arc that defines the borderless nature of modern technology and finance.