Wences Casares

He grew up in Patagonia in southern Argentina. A 2013 FOX NewsFOX NewsFOX News is a U.S. television and digital news media brand centered on FOX News Channel and owned by Fox Corporation, with operations spanning news reporting, political commentary and digital content.Open the full entry article and Reid HoffmanReid HoffmanReid Hoffman is an American entrepreneur, venture investor, author and podcast host, co-founder of LinkedIn, Inflection AI and Manas AI, and a partner at Greylock. A former PayPal executive, he has built and backed businesses in professional networking, artificial intelligence and drug discovery. His co-authored books include The Startup of You and Blitzscaling.Open the full entry’s podcast Masters of Scale state that his parents were sheep ranchers there; an iProUP article of 2019 states that he was born in Chubut Province and describes him as a native of Esquel and says that his family raised cattle and was not wealthy.⁠[1][2][3][4]

On Laura ShinLaura ShinLaura Shin is a cryptocurrency journalist, podcast host and author, a former senior editor at Forbes who founded the crypto media outlet Unchained, hosts its podcast of the same name, and wrote “The Cryptopians,” about the first big cryptocurrency craze.Open the full entry’s podcast Unchained he said that his mother worked as a receptionist at a government bureau on a modest salary; Greylock’s 2019 introduction to its podcast episode with him states instead that his mother was an entrepreneur who involved him in her business and that his father built his own computer for the family. He has two sisters, whom iProUP names as María and Azul.⁠[1][5][4]

On Masters of Scale he said that his family lost its savings three times: once in a major Argentine devaluation, about ten years later in a hyperinflation, and once when the government confiscated bank deposits. On Unchained he recalled that the hyperinflation came in 1989, when he was 15; prices changed constantly, and his mother took him and his two sisters out of school carrying two plastic bags of cash to spend before it was worth less the next day. He described his parents’ frustration and anxiety at the time: “Nobody trusted anyone with anything.”⁠[3][1]

Ages given for him: a FOX News article of December 20, 2013 says he was 39, PayPal’s announcement of January 2016 says he was 41, and a Perfil article of July 2025 says he was 50.⁠[2][6][7]

The Aspen Institute profile states that he spent one year, 1991–1992, as a Rotary Exchange Student in Washington, PennsylvaniaPennsylvaniaPennsylvania (officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania) is a Middle Atlantic state of the United States; its capital is Harrisburg, and Philadelphia and Pittsburgh are its two great metropolitan areas. One of the original 13 states, it ratified the U.S. Constitution on December 12, 1787, the second state to do so. Its population in the 2020 census (April 1, 2020) was 13,002,700.Open the full entry.⁠[8]

He first visited Silicon Valley at 19, for a conference there in 1994; he described the experience: “It blew my mind.”⁠[2][3]

He studied business administration at Universidad de San Andrés in Buenos Aires; the Aspen Institute profile states that he studied there for three years. iProUP writes that he applied for a full scholarship but was first awarded only half, that his father informed the university that his son would sit the exam again and asked it to say he had not been admitted if he again won only half, and that he passed, obtained the aid and left Patagonia. iProUP also writes that while studying he worked as a doorman at the Hyatt hotel (now the Four Seasons) and interned at Consultatio, Eduardo Costantini’s company, and at Argentina’s central bank (Banco Central).⁠[2][4][8]

In 1994, at 20, he founded Internet Argentina S.A., Argentina’s first internet service provider, with his sisters, to provide internet services and so that they themselves could get connected. Reid Hoffman said on Masters of Scale that he dropped out of college to start it and persuaded his sisters to drop out too.⁠[9][10][4][3]

Accounts of how he left the company differ: the World Economic Forum profile states that he later sold Internet Argentina, while on Masters of Scale the Endeavor co-founder Linda Rottenberg said that he was later thrown out of it.⁠[9][3]

Fortune and the World Economic Forum profile state that he founded the Argentine online brokerage Patagon in 1997, and the World Economic Forum adds that he was its chairman and chief executive; iProUP writes instead that he and his classmate Constancio Larguía founded Patagon in 1998 with $10,000, when he was 24 and had not finished his university studies. He co-founded the company with Constancio Larguía with the aim of bringing online stock trading to Latin America.⁠[11][9][4][12]

On Masters of Scale, Reid Hoffman said that Casares’s 33 meetings with investors in Argentina all went the same way; investors, Casares said, would ask him a version of “Who’s your father?” On the program Linda Rottenberg said that 34 local investors turned him down. He also recalled investors asking “who is your father, what private school did you go to?”⁠[3][2]

Linda Rottenberg met him in Buenos Aires when he was 24 and chose him from hundreds of applicants for Endeavor’s mentorship program; he was one of the first entrepreneurs that the nonprofit selected. On Masters of Scale Linda Rottenberg said that Endeavor helped him raise money from Fred WilsonFred WilsonFred Wilson is an American venture capitalist, co-founder and partner of the New York venture firm Union Square Ventures (USV), and earlier co-founder, with Jerry Colonna, of the internet investment firm Flatiron Partners. He has written the blog AVC since 2003, chaired Etsy’s board for many years, and is a director of Coinbase.Open the full entry of Flatiron Partners and from Chase Capital and helped him find a chief operating officer. Patagon’s investors included George SorosGeorge SorosGeorge Soros is an American investor and philanthropist, the founder of the hedge fund Soros Fund Management and of the Open Society Foundations. He is known for macro trading and for shorting the British pound in 1992, is also a major political donor on the side of the U.S. Democratic Party, and has long been at the center of political controversy and conspiracy theories.Open the full entry, MicrosoftMicrosoftMicrosoft is a technology company founded by Bill Gates and Paul Allen in 1975 and headquartered in Redmond, Washington, with businesses spanning Windows, Microsoft 365, Azure, enterprise software, artificial intelligence, gaming and devices.Open the full entry, IntelIntelIntel is a semiconductor company headquartered in Santa Clara, California, founded by Robert Noyce and Gordon Moore in 1968; it introduced the 4004 microprocessor in 1971, its x86 processors have long powered personal computers, it has pursued a foundry strategy since 2021, and Lip-Bu Tan has been its chief executive officer since 2025.Open the full entry and Fred Wilson, who called him one of the best entrepreneurs he had backed.⁠[2][13][3]

The World Economic Forum profile states that Patagon became Latin America’s first comprehensive internet financial services portal and expanded its online banking to the United StatesUnited StatesThe United States is a federal country in North America made up of 50 states, the District of Columbia as the seat of government, and territories such as Puerto Rico and Guam; its capital is Washington, D.C. The Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. The 2020 census (April 1, 2020) counted a resident population of 331,449,281, and the 435 seats of the House of Representatives are apportioned among the states on the basis of the census.Open the full entry, Spain and Germany. Carlos Maslatón, a lawyer who worked at Patagon from its beginnings, said that the company grew from eight employees to 1,000 in three years.⁠[9][14][12]

In 2000 Spain’s Banco Santander acquired Patagon. FOX News, Fortune, the World Economic Forum and Masters of Scale give the price as $750 million; iProUP writes that in March 2000 Banco Santander Central Hispano bought 75% of the company for $585 million; Carlos Maslatón put the stake at 76%; Perfil in 2025 gives the price as about $700 million. The deal was completed in March 2000, a month before the market crash, and most of its value was later written off. Forbes Argentina writes that he was 27 when he sold Patagon.⁠[2][11][9][3][13][4][12][7][10]

Looking back, he said: “Éramos un grupo de pibes sin experiencia en este negocio y nos quisimos llevar el mundo por delante” (“We were a bunch of kids with no experience in this business and we wanted to take on the world”). On Unchained in 2018 he said that from 2000 he ran an online bank in Europe, the first to serve the European market.⁠[4][1]

In 2002 he co-founded the Chilean video game developer Wanako Games with Santiago Bilinkis. The World Economic Forum profile states that its game Assault Heroes won a 2006 Xbox Live “Game of the Year” award. Accounts of the sale differ: Fortune writes that he sold the company to Activision in 2006, and the World Economic Forum also says it was later acquired by Activision; FOX News writes that Vivendi Games bought it in 2007, Forbes Argentina that it was sold in 2007, iProUP that it was sold to Vivendi in 2007, and the Stanford Technology Ventures Program profile that it was sold to Vivendi Universal.⁠[11][10][4][9][2][15]

Also in 2002 he founded Banco Lemon, a Brazilian retail bank for the underbanked. Forbes Argentina writes that he founded it with Michael Esrubilsky and Guillermo Kirchner. His business partner Micky MalkaMicky MalkaMicky Malka (Meyer Malka in securities filings) is the founder and managing partner of the venture capital firm Ribbit Capital and earlier co-founded brokerage, banking and payments companies in Venezuela, Brazil and the United States; the Forbes Midas List has included him six times since 2021.Open the full entry, in a 2026 interview with David SenraDavid SenraDavid Senra is the founder and host of the Founders podcast, on which he reads biographies of entrepreneurs to discuss starting and running businesses and making personal decisions. He began producing the show in 2016, partnered with Colossus in 2022, and in 2025 launched David Senra, a long-form interview show under his own name.Open the full entry, called the business Lemon Bank and said that they put all the proceeds from selling their first dot-com company into the Brazilian bank: “It was just my business partner, Wences Casares, and myself, and Michael,” with no investors. They were 25 and 26, he said, and almost lost everything because the economy did not take off; at its peak the business had 7,000 physical locations across Brazil serving 50 million customers.⁠[9][15][10][16]

In an interview published by Endeavor in 2025, Micky Malka said that the two met at 23 through a mutual friend in New York; their first meeting in Buenos Aires did not go well, but later Casares invited him out for a beer, they ended up in a fight with some locals in which Malka helped him out, and after that they revisited the idea of a partnership.⁠[17]

In 2003 he completed Harvard Business School’s Owner/President Management Program.⁠[6][8]

Forbes Argentina writes that from 2004 to 2007, in two stages, he sailed around the world on a sailing catamaran with his wife and their first two children. A TechCrunchTechCrunchTechCrunch is an American technology news outlet founded in 2005 by Michael Arrington and Keith Teare and headquartered in San Francisco; it mainly covers technology companies, startups, and venture capital, and hosts events such as TechCrunch Disrupt. Its ownership passed successively through AOL, Verizon, and Yahoo, and in 2025 Regent announced its acquisition.Open the full entry article on his company sales says that the year after selling Patagon he spent three years on a boat with his family; iProUP writes that he traveled around the world with his wife for almost three years, with some interruptions, and that his first child was born during the trip.⁠[10][13][4]

iProUP writes that during Patagon’s expansion he set himself up in Miami, speaking from his office in South Beach in March 2000, and that he moved to San Francisco in 2007. Bling Nation launched in 2007; the Stanford Technology Ventures Program profile describes him as founder and co-CEO of Bling Nation and a founding partner of the private investment firm MECK, Ltd. On May 1, 2007, he gave a talk in the program’s series titled “Three Lessons About What It Means to Be an Entrepreneur.”⁠[4][18][15]

The World Economic Forum profile states that Banco do Brasil acquired Banco Lemon in June 2009; FOX News and Forbes Argentina also place the sale in 2009. Asked about the year of the sale in the David Senra interview, Micky Malka answered “2008.” iProUP writes that two years after his 2007 move to San Francisco he ceded a large part of Lemon’s business to Banco do Brasil. The prices of this sale and of the Wanako sale were not disclosed; both were much smaller than Patagon but returned more.⁠[9][2][10][16][4][13]

As of October 30, 2009, Bling Nation had raised $20 million in Series B funding from Balderton Capital, bringing its total to $33 million, and he was its chief executive. The company partnered with local banks in small American communities, which gave customers a chip that attaches to a cell phone and pays directly from a checking account at local merchants equipped with readers; merchants could use it to award coupons, points or discounts. The system was then in use in two small towns outside Colorado Springs, ColoradoColoradoColorado is a U.S. state classified as one of the Mountain states, with Denver as its capital. It was admitted to the Union on August 1, 1876, as the 38th state, and its population in the 2020 census (April 1, 2020) was 5,773,714.Open the full entry: La Junta and Woodland Park.⁠[18]

He said that the company’s cut of each transaction was “very small”; even counting debit fees and that cut, merchants paid 50% less in transaction fees than on credit cards. He also said that the system would soon launch in towns in the Northwest and Southeast of the United States; the company was in talks with universities and military bases.⁠[18]

He first encountered bitcoin in 2011, when he sent money to repair the bus that he and his childhood friends use for their yearly trips, which was then in Argentina; on Masters of Scale he said that Argentina had shut down Western Union, PayPal and everything else, that a friend asked whether he had looked into bitcoin, and that he found an older man on Craigslist willing to sell him $2,000 worth of bitcoin. On Unchained he said that he was already living in CaliforniaCaliforniaCalifornia is a U.S. state on the Pacific coast; its capital is Sacramento and its largest city is Los Angeles. California was admitted to the Union on September 9, 1850, as the 31st state. Its population at the 2020 Census (April 1, 2020) was 39,538,223, the largest of any state.Open the full entry, that Argentina had currency controls and that the friend suggested bitcoin so that he could pay his sister in Argentina; he met the Craigslist seller in person: “We met at a cafe in Palo Alto. I brought $2,000 in cash.” Greylock’s episode introduction gives the bus repair bill as $200.⁠[3][1][5]

On Masters of Scale he said that at first “I was super skeptical and cynical.” He hired hackers to test the system; they asked for more time, $250,000 and payment in bitcoin, after which he decided: “I want to dedicate the rest of my career, my reputation, and my capital to help this system succeed.” On Unchained he said that it took him about six months to go from very skeptical to all in.⁠[3][1]

On May 18, 2011, he spoke in the Stanford Technology Ventures Program’s series under the title “The Value of True Partnerships.”⁠[15]

The digital wallet Lemon launched in 2011, letting users store IDs, payment cards and loyalty cards on their phones, though not pay at the point of sale; in 2012 it raised an $8 million Series A from investors including Maveron, Lightspeed Venture PartnersLightspeed Venture PartnersLightspeed Venture Partners backs companies from seed through late-stage financing. Its website distinguishes Lightspeed Management Company (LSVP) from Lightspeed India Partners (LSIP): the two are separately operated investment advisers, with the U.S., European, and Israeli offices belonging to LSVP and the India and Southeast Asia offices belonging to LSIP.Open the full entry, CampVentures, Draper Fisher Jurvetson and Social+CapitalSocial CapitalSocial Capital is a US technology investment firm founded in 2011 and led by Chamath Palihapitiya. Its activities evolved from venture funds toward investing and incubation with permanent proprietary capital.Open the full entry Partnership. It had teams in Palo Alto and Buenos Aires. Lemon Wallet was a digital wallet app aimed at American users.⁠[19][10]

On December 12, 2013, the identity theft protection company LifeLock acquired Lemon and launched LifeLock Wallet based on Lemon Wallet Plus technology; Lemon’s chief executive, Casares, would join LifeLock as General Manager of Mobile and lead its mobile group. Accounts of the price differ: TechCrunch gives about $42.6 million, iProUP $42.3 million, Forbes Argentina $43 million and El Cronista $50 million.⁠[19][4][10][12]

In a profile of him published on December 20, 2013, he described entrepreneurship: “Being an entrepreneur is a fancy, glamorous way of saying that you’re a doer.”⁠[2]

He resigned on March 6, 2014, and on March 13 announced the launch of Xapo with $20 million in venture capital from Benchmark, Ribbit CapitalRibbit CapitalRibbit Capital is a venture-capital firm founded in 2012 by Meyer “Micky” Malka and headquartered in Palo Alto, California. It began with financial-technology investing and has expanded into AI, commerce and related infrastructure. Its investments include Coinbase, Robinhood and Nubank.Open the full entry and Fortress Investment GroupFortress Investment GroupFortress Investment Group is a global alternative investment manager active in credit, real estate, private equity and asset-based finance.Open the full entry. Four months later Xapo raised another $20 million from Greylock Partners and Index VenturesIndex VenturesIndex Ventures is a venture capital firm founded in Geneva in 1996. It invests from seed through growth and operates across London, San Francisco and New York, supporting technology companies through a transatlantic network.Open the full entry.⁠[11][20]

The “About Us” page of Xapo Bank’s website dates the company’s founding to 2013 and says that Xapo grew out of his experience of hyperinflation in Argentina, to protect people’s life savings in bitcoin; finews.com writes that Xapo began in 2013 as a bitcoin vault service for early adopters; he built highly secure cold-storage vaults, one of them in a former army fortress in the Swiss Alps. iProUP writes instead that he founded Xapo in 2014. His co-founder was Federico Murrone.⁠[21][22][4][3]

Mt. GoxMt. GoxMt. Gox was an early bitcoin exchange based in Tokyo, Japan. Jed McCaleb turned it into a bitcoin trading site in 2010 and Mark Karpelès took it over in 2011, after which it became for a time the world’s largest bitcoin trading platform. In February 2014 it halted withdrawals and shut its website, saying about 850,000 bitcoins were missing, and it then went through a civil rehabilitation application, bankruptcy, and civil rehabilitation proceedings at the Tokyo District Court; the trustee has been repaying creditors in bitcoin and bitcoin cash since July 2024, and as of October 2026 the repayment deadline had been extended to October 31, 2027.Open the full entry, then the largest bitcoin exchange, went bankrupt; on Masters of Scale he said that this made people care more about security and that, because Xapo’s security was well known, it brought a lot of coins to Xapo. Reid Hoffman dubbed him bitcoin’s “patient zero,” and he promoted bitcoin in Silicon Valley and on Wall Street; in a profile published on June 11, 2015, he said: “It is the biggest step forward in the democratisation of money we’ve ever seen.”⁠[3][14]

A Fortune article of June 4, 2015, states that on October 3, 2014, LifeLock sued him and four other Xapo employees, each of whom had previously worked at Lemon, in Santa Clara Superior Court, among them Cynthia McAdam, Lemon’s general counsel and later Xapo’s president; Xapo itself was not a defendant. A Fortune article of July 28, 2015, and a CoinDeskCoinDeskCoinDesk is a cryptocurrency media, events, index, and data company founded in 2013 and headquartered in New York. Its businesses include the CoinDesk news website, the annual crypto industry conference Consensus, and the CoinDesk Indices index business. In November 2023, the digital asset exchange Bullish acquired CoinDesk from Digital Currency Group, and CoinDesk has since operated as an independent subsidiary of Bullish.Open the full entry profile of June 2015 date the suit to August 2014. LifeLock alleged that Xapo was launched with a bitcoin product developed by Lemon employees on Lemon’s time, equipment and facilities, and that Lemon’s board halted the bitcoin project in the summer of 2013 but the work continued in secret; LifeLock also said that the acknowledgment letters he obtained, stating that it would not stake a claim to his bitcoin storage vault, covered only people providing nothing more than strategic advice. Lemon first fired three employees it believed were working for Xapo and then, on August 1, 2014, fired him for cause. LifeLock asked the court to make the defendants give up the value of the Xapo product tied to the alleged misconduct.⁠[11][23][14]

His and Cynthia McAdam’s lawyer, Steven Ragland, called the suit “baseless” and said that LifeLock’s claims “lack merit and we look forward to proving their allegations false.” The two filed a demurrer, arguing that it is common in the industry to describe collaborators as advisors. LifeLock declined to comment beyond its court filings, and he declined to comment on the suit.⁠[11][14]

In 2015 Xapo moved its headquarters to the “Crypto Valley” of Zug, Switzerland, hoping to obtain a Swiss banking license, and hired Olga Feldmeier, a former UBSUBSUBS is a global financial group headquartered in Zurich, Switzerland, operating wealth management, Swiss personal and corporate banking, asset management and investment banking. Its modern bank emerged from a 1998 merger, its holding company was incorporated in 2014, and it acquired Credit Suisse in 2023.Open the full entry and BarclaysBarclaysBarclays is a banking and financial services group headquartered in London, United Kingdom, with Barclays PLC as its parent company. It traces its origins to a London goldsmith bank established in 1690 and developed through bank mergers, overseas expansion and investment banking reorganisations. Its businesses span UK retail and corporate banking, private banking and wealth management, global investment banking and US consumer banking.Open the full entry banker; Swiss regulators required servers to be located in Switzerland and a board with a majority of local directors. Xapo Bank’s website states under “2014 – 2015” that the company secured Swiss registration (FINMA approved). In a talk at Chicago Ideas Week in 2015 he called bitcoin “the new gold standard.”⁠[22][21][11]

On July 6, 2015, Fortune wrote that California Superior Court Judge Peter Kirwan had overruled his demurrer on all four of LifeLock’s causes of action, that the case would proceed to discovery and that he had to answer the complaint by July 24; a LifeLock spokeswoman said the company was pleased with the ruling. The defendants included him and chief operating officer Federico Murrone, and the judge wrote in the ruling: “The letter thus does not clearly release defendant Casares from any or all of the breaches alleged here.” The Spanish-language outlet DiarioBitcoin wrote on July 14, 2015, by contrast, that five Xapo employees had been cleared by Judge Peter Kirwan.⁠[24][25][26]

On July 24, 2015, he filed a cross-complaint against LifeLock and Lemon asserting breach of contract, breach of the implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing, conversion, unjust enrichment and declaratory relief, seeking a monetary award and punitive damages in amounts to be determined at trial and requesting a jury trial. It alleged that LifeLock had promised not to interfere with his management of Lemon’s operations and to accelerate the vesting of certain stock options if his role were significantly reduced, but obstructed his management of the team and his development of the next-generation LifeLock Wallet, and it described LifeLock’s management as “highly dysfunctional”; it also cited a February 2014 letter from LifeLock president Hilary Schneider acknowledging that his bitcoin work was unrelated to LifeLock’s business. His cross-complaint also alleged that LifeLock “squandered the success of its acquired company.”⁠[23][20]

PayPal announced on January 13, 2016, that it had appointed him to its board of directors effective January 12, with a seat on the Compensation Committee, bringing the board to nine members; the release describes him as founder and CEO of Xapo. PayPal president and CEO Dan Schulman said that he had a “unique line of sight” into the future of commerce; Casares said: “I am honored to serve on the board of an iconic global company.”⁠[6]

By September 22, 2016, LifeLock had filed a new suit against him and Cynthia McAdam in the Delaware Court of Chancery, alleging that they withheld intellectual property relating to Xapo and to bitcoin integration software that should have been included in the 2013 acquisition of Lemon, that they developed Xapo during a transition period while employed by LifeLock and that their post-merger employment was “little more than a ruse”; LifeLock said it chose DelawareDelawareDelaware is a U.S. state in the Mid-Atlantic region on the East Coast, with its capital at Dover and Wilmington as its largest city. On December 7, 1787, it became the first state to ratify the U.S. Constitution, entering the Union as the 1st state, and it had a population of 989,948 in the 2020 census (April 1, 2020).Open the full entry because of a stipulation in the merger agreement. The California suit had been dismissed earlier in 2016, and LifeLock’s appeal had faced delays. The lawyer Steven Ragland said: “Whatever their motivations are, they’ve obviously decided to throw even more money into what I consider a personal vendetta.”⁠[20]

In an interview published on February 5, 2018, he said that he had many conversations with Bill GatesBill GatesBill Gates is an American entrepreneur, investor and philanthropist who cofounded Microsoft with Paul Allen in 1975 and served as its chief executive and chairman. He later shifted his focus toward global health, education and climate, chairs the Gates Foundation, and manages investments through arrangements including Cascade.Open the full entry, who was very skeptical at first and was convinced after several months: “Yo le regalé sus primeros bitcoins” (“I gave him his first bitcoins”). He called bitcoin digital gold (“El bitcoin es oro digital”), advised putting 1% of one’s assets into bitcoin and holding rather than speculating, and estimated that bitcoin had at least a 20% chance of failing and at most a 50% chance of succeeding. He also said that he used to see being from Patagonia and not having gone to Harvard UniversityHarvard UniversityHarvard University is a private research university in Massachusetts, established by the Massachusetts Bay Colony legislature in 1636 and named in 1639 for early benefactor John Harvard. Its principal campuses are in Cambridge and the Allston and Longwood neighborhoods of Boston. It includes Harvard College, graduate and professional schools, and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. Two governing boards share oversight. Alan M. Garber was president as of October 2026, and the endowment stood at $56.9 billion at the end of fiscal 2025.Open the full entry as a disadvantage. Xapo became the largest bitcoin custodian in under four years and grew from 30 employees in 2017 to about 100 remote staff, 20% of them Argentine; his partner Federico Murrone was its CCO.⁠[10]

In 2018 he attended Allen & Company’s conference in Sun Valley, IdahoIdahoIdaho is a state in the northwestern United States, often classed as a Mountain state and also considered part of the Pacific Northwest; its capital and largest city is Boise. It was admitted to the Union on July 3, 1890, as the 43rd state, and its population in the 2020 census (April 1, 2020) was 1,839,106.Open the full entry. On December 25, 2018, Laura Shin’s podcast Unchained re-ran her interview with him; he said: “I see Xapo as a platform to help BitcoinBitcoinBitcoin (common symbol BTC) is an open peer-to-peer electronic cash protocol, network, and native digital asset. Full nodes independently verify transactions and blocks according to the consensus rules; transactions are recorded as UTXOs, and blocks are organized into a public ledger through proof of work. Bitcoin is not issued or managed by any single institution, but using, holding in custody, and trading it still involve key, privacy, market, and legal risks.Open the full entry succeed,” and that 97% of customers’ bitcoin was held in deep cold storage and that no single employee could move customer funds alone.⁠[7][1]

In August 2019 Xapo sold part of its custody business to CoinbaseCoinbaseCoinbase is a U.S. operator of crypto asset trading platforms, founded in 2012 by Brian Armstrong and Fred Ehrsam, whose listed parent is Coinbase Global, Inc.; it went public through a direct listing on Nasdaq (ticker COIN) in April 2021 and joined the S&P 500 in May 2025. It provides crypto trading, custody, staking, and stablecoin-related services, launched USDC with Circle, develops the Ethereum layer-2 network Base, and acquired the crypto options exchange Deribit in 2025; its venture investing operates as Coinbase Ventures.Open the full entry for $55 million; Fortune wrote in 2024 that he sold Xapo’s custody business to Coinbase for $55 million, and Xapo Bank’s blog describes what was sold as its institutional custody business. Xapo then pulled back from Switzerland and the United States. Xapo had raised $40 million in two rounds from backers including Max LevchinMax LevchinMax Levchin is an entrepreneur and computer scientist, one of the co-founders of PayPal and the founder and chief executive officer of the consumer payments and credit company Affirm.Open the full entry, Yuri Milner and Jerry YangJerry YangJerry Yang is a Yahoo co-founder and former CEO and the founding partner of AME Cloud Ventures. He helped develop Yahoo’s relationships with Yahoo Japan and Alibaba and served as chair of Stanford University’s Board of Trustees.Open the full entry.⁠[3][27][28][22][12]

Xapo was fully remote, with 275 people in 62 countries, and he built underground vaults for Xapo on three continents. On December 6, 2019, Greylock published Reid Hoffman’s interview with him on its Greymatter podcast; the episode introduction describes Xapo as a Greylock portfolio company and calls him “Patient Zero for Bitcoin in Silicon Valley.”⁠[3][5]

PayPal’s Form 8-K with a report date of March 25, 2020, states that he would not stand for re-election to the board when his term expired at the 2020 annual meeting of stockholders and that his decision was not the result of any disagreement with the company.⁠[29]

In 2021 Xapo moved to Gibraltar, which allowed a remote-first structure and cloud infrastructure; Xapo Bank’s blog states that Xapo Bank launched in 2021, offering US dollar and bitcoin accounts in one place. Xapo Bank’s website states that Xapo Bank Limited is regulated as a credit institution by the Gibraltar Financial Services Commission, placing that regulation in 2021, and that its crypto asset services are provided by Xapo VASP Limited, a separately regulated DLT provider.⁠[22][28][21]

On the peak of bitcoin in Xapo’s custody, Xapo Bank’s blog says it held over 800,000 bitcoin at its peak, while Xapo Bank CEO Seamus Rocca said in 2025 that assets peaked at around 900,000 bitcoin before the custody business was sold. In 2025 Xapo Bank had about 200 employees, did not serve US clients, still kept a key server node in its Swiss vault, and had posted its first profit in 2023.⁠[28][22]

By February 23, 2024, he had stepped back into an elder-statesman role, with others running Xapo as a crypto bank, and remained its chairman; Xapo then paid interest on customers’ cash and bitcoin, did not lend out their crypto, charged a $150 annual fee, held about 25,000 bitcoin, and had its largest customer base in Argentina and Latin America. Writing in Fortune, Jeff John Roberts grouped him with KrakenKrakenKraken is a digital-asset trading platform founded in 2011 by Jesse Powell and Thanh Luu and launched for trading in 2013. As Payward’s flagship brand, it has expanded into spot and derivatives trading, equities, tokenized assets, custody and payments through jurisdiction-specific entities.Open the full entry’s Jesse Powell, Coinbase’s Brian ArmstrongBrian ArmstrongBrian Armstrong is an American entrepreneur and the co-founder, Chairman, and Chief Executive Officer of the crypto asset trading platform Coinbase. He founded Coinbase in 2012, led the company to a direct listing on Nasdaq in 2021, and holds a majority of its voting power through a dual-class share structure; he also founded the scientific collaboration platform ResearchHub and co-founded the longevity research company NewLimit.Open the full entry and Digital Currency GroupDigital Currency GroupDigital Currency Group (DCG) is a crypto asset investment and holding company headquartered in Stamford, Connecticut, founded by Barry Silbert in 2015. It invests in blockchain startups with permanent capital and owns subsidiaries including the digital asset manager Grayscale. In 2022, its crypto lender Genesis suffered losses after major client Three Arrows Capital defaulted and filed for bankruptcy the following year, leaving DCG and Silbert facing a lawsuit by the New York Attorney General, an SEC penalty, and multiple civil suits.Open the full entry’s Barry Silbert as early founders whose businesses still thrive, and called him “crypto royalty.”⁠[27]

By April 10, 2025, the startup Meanwhile, which collects and pays out life insurance policies in bitcoin, had closed a $40 million Series A led by Framework Ventures and Fulgur Ventures with his participation; the company put the round’s valuation at $190 million.⁠[30]

In July 2025 he was a guest at Allen & Company’s conference in Sun Valley, Idaho, whose attendees included Bill Gates, Jeff BezosJeff BezosJeff Bezos is an American entrepreneur and investor who founded Amazon in 1994, led it as chief executive for many years, and became its executive chair in 2021. He also founded the spaceflight company Blue Origin, bought The Washington Post in 2013, and set up philanthropic funds including the Bezos Earth Fund.Open the full entry and Sam AltmanSam AltmanSam Altman is an entrepreneur and investor, and the co-founder and chief executive officer of OpenAI. He previously served as president of Y Combinator and founded the location-based social service Loopt. He also helped found Tools for Humanity and Merge Labs, has invested in energy and life sciences ventures, and has driven public discussion of AI governance, employment, and wealth distribution.Open the full entry. A Perfil article of July 11, 2025, says that he is Argentine, known in Argentina as “Wenceslao Casares” and in the United States and the corporate world as “Wences Casares,” that he lives in the United States, and describes him as a former CEO of Xapo.⁠[7]

As of November 2026, the “About Us” page of Xapo Bank’s website names him as founder in its “2013” entry; the directors and executives it lists, headed by director and CEO Seamus Rocca, do not include him. The Aspen Institute profile describes him as founder and chairman of Xapo Bank.⁠[21][8]

FOX News wrote in 2013 that he lived in Palo Alto, California, with his wife and three children. His son, Diogenes CasaresDiogenes CasaresDiogenes Casares is a crypto investor and entrepreneur and the CEO of Patagon Markets. He previously ran Patagon Management, a firm focused on activist DAO investing, then founded the crypto derivatives platform Stream, and is a member of the 2024 class of the Thiel Fellowship.Open the full entry, is a crypto investor whom CoinDesk described in February 2024 as “the son of crypto bank Xapo’s founder Wences Casares.” Perfil wrote in 2025 that Diogenes Casares was one of the specialists Argentine media consulted to explain why the $Libra affair was a crypto scam.⁠[2][31][7]

The TechCrunch article on his company sales says that he lived in Woodside and owned a castle in Chile, where he hosted a yearly asado for hundreds of Latin American entrepreneurs and some people from Silicon Valley, and which he rented to a film crew shooting a vampire show. Forbes Argentina writes that by 2011 he had settled in Silicon Valley.⁠[13][10]

Each year he and eight childhood friends from Patagonia spend a week traveling on a bus they bought and fitted out, driving it from Buenos Aires.⁠[2][3]

He has served on the board of Endeavor, has invested in several companies of Endeavor entrepreneurs and has mentored entrepreneurs. PayPal’s 2016 release states that he sat on the boards of the nonprofits Kiva and Endeavor and was a member of the Young Presidents’ Organization. He has also been a board member of PayPal, Libra and Coin CenterCoin CenterCoin Center is a nonprofit cryptocurrency policy research and advocacy organization founded in 2014 and based in Washington, D.C. Co-founded by Jerry Brito and Robin Weisman, it works on digital assets, financial privacy and software developers’ rights through research, policy education, regulatory comments and litigation.Open the full entry; the Aspen Institute profile states that he sits on the board of Diem and has served on the boards of Endeavor and Kiva. He financed ventures in Argentina such as Quasar Ventures, the company builder created by Andy Freire and Santiago Bilinkis. The Stanford Technology Ventures Program profile states that he sits on the board of the Viva Trust and established Fundación Síntesis to develop Latin American leaders.⁠[2][6][3][8][4][15]

Records of his selection for the World Economic Forum’s young leaders program differ: PayPal’s 2016 release says he was an elected member of the World Economic Forum’s “Global Leaders of Tomorrow” Class of 2001, and the Stanford Technology Ventures Program profile says he has been an elected member of the Global Leaders for Tomorrow since 2001; the Aspen Institute profile describes him as a World Economic Forum Young Global Leader (Class of 2011). The Aspen Institute profile also states that he is a member of the 2017 class of Henry Crown Fellows in the Aspen Global Leadership Network.⁠[6][15][8]

He regarded selling three companies as a failure rather than an achievement, considered serial entrepreneurship a flaw and thought that strong founders should stay with their companies, as the founders of OracleOracleOracle (Oracle Corporation) is a U.S. enterprise software and cloud computing company founded in 1977 by Larry Ellison, Bob Miner, and Ed Oates. Starting with relational databases, it expanded into enterprise applications, cloud infrastructure, hardware, and industry systems, and broadened its product range through acquisitions of companies such as Sun Microsystems, NetSuite, and Cerner.Open the full entry, AppleAppleApple is a public technology company founded in 1976 and headquartered in Cupertino, California, United States. Its business includes the iPhone, Mac, iPad, wearables, and services such as digital content, payments, and cloud storage. The company builds its product system through in-house hardware, operating systems, and services.Open the full entry, AmazonAmazonAmazon is a publicly traded U.S. technology and retail company founded by Jeff Bezos in 1994, with its principal corporate offices in Seattle. Its businesses span e-commerce, logistics and fulfillment, digital advertising, membership and entertainment services, consumer electronics, and Amazon Web Services cloud computing.Open the full entry, GoogleGoogleGoogle is an American technology company founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin and incorporated in 1998. It became an Alphabet subsidiary in 2015. Its businesses include internet search, advertising, software platforms, cloud computing, and artificial intelligence.Open the full entry and HP did. He said: “I think that’s a character flaw, and I have it.” “I wish I hadn’t sold a single one.” “I sold them because it got really hard.” He has also said: “I don’t need to sell a company, I don’t want to.”⁠[13][14]

Xapo Bank: Official website: https://www.xapobank.com/ (opens in a new window).⁠[21]

PayPal: Official website: https://www.paypal.com/ (opens in a new window).⁠[32]

Endeavor: Official website: https://endeavor.org/ (opens in a new window).⁠[17]