Sunny Ray sits down with Iñaki, co-founder and chief research officer at Crossing Capital, a five-year-old crypto wealth management platform serving clients from Mexico to Argentina and Spain through a non-custodial API model. Iñaki traces his path from a fifteen-year career in technology transfer, connecting Argentine universities and companies with funding for R&D, to a full pivot into crypto after reading the Satoshi Nakamoto whitepaper in 2018. He shares personal stories of meeting Adam Back at a Bitcoin conference in Amsterdam and interviewing Vitalik Buterin on his own TV show during La Bitcoin conference in Argentina. Much of the conversation centers on Argentina's decades of hyperinflation, currency devaluations, and capital controls, and how that history has made Bitcoin and stablecoins like Tether an intuitive escape valve for ordinary Argentinians. Iñaki and Sunny also debate crypto's reputation as a casino versus Bitcoin as digital gold, touching on the controversial Milei token incident, and discuss why most people still prioritize inflation protection over the deeper values of privacy and financial freedom.
An Argentine crypto veteran explains why hyperinflation makes Bitcoin obvious, even if privacy still isn't.
Can you give a quick intro to your role at Crossing Capital?
Crossing Capital is five years old, based in Argentina and the US. We help people invest in crypto securely. Clients keep their money in their own exchange account and connect via API, so we can trade for them but never withdraw their funds. You could call us a wealth manager for crypto, built for people who lack the time, knowledge, or have had bad experiences investing on their own.
Tell us about meeting Adam Back in Amsterdam.
I was at a Bitcoin conference in Amsterdam around 2024 and saw Adam Back standing alone checking his phone. I walked up, congratulated him on his career, and told him I was from Argentina. He said he'd never been there but knew people who helped build Bitcoin from Argentina, like Sergio Lerner. We ended up talking for about ten minutes, and he was incredibly humble and approachable, not a diva at all.
What did Adam Back say about AI and Bitcoin's future?
I asked him how he thought artificial intelligence would interact with Bitcoin. This was before ChatGPT really exploded, so his answer was more exploratory. He basically said Bitcoin is built to survive whatever risks come, whether that's AI or, as he's spoken about more recently, quantum computing. I think AI can actually strengthen Bitcoin, both as a native payment technology for machines and because miners are increasingly powering AI infrastructure.
How has Argentina's history with inflation shaped crypto adoption there?
In Argentina, inflation is part of our DNA. We've had it for seventy or eighty years and changed currencies four times. We're number two or three in the world for holding physical dollars under the mattress. So when stablecoins arrived, it was the perfect solution. Ask any Argentinian about crypto and they'll say they've bought Bitcoin, Ethereum, or Tether. The ecosystem here is huge, from users to developers to conferences with ten to twelve thousand attendees.
What drew you into innovation consulting, and what did a typical project look like?
I spent close to fifteen years connecting Argentina's scientific system, universities and public labs, with companies that needed R&D. For example, a pharma company needing to test a new pill would go through public labs to run animal trials before going to market. I secured funding, often through multilateral bank agreements, and coordinated the research process between institutions and industry.
What lesson did you take away about institutions from that work?
There were real pros, Argentina has qualified people doing good public research. But sustainability was the problem. When a company received grant money, Argentina's economy would erode twenty to forty percent of its purchasing power before the project finished. I struggled with government, companies, and scientific institutions over this until I'd had enough and pivoted fully into crypto after discovering the Bitcoin whitepaper in 2018.
How did people react when you first tried to explain Bitcoin to them?
At first it was, come on, that's digital. So I'd ask how much of their spending was actually done with physical bills, usually just five or ten percent. Then they'd question why they should trust Bitcoin without a guarantee, so I'd ask if they trusted the peso, or even the dollar, which the US government also controls unilaterally. The hardest objection is always volatility, so I show them how gold or tech stocks are volatile too.
How do you reconcile Bitcoin's promise with crypto's casino reputation?
It's definitely still associated with casino behavior, and things like the Milei token in Argentina made that worse for people who weren't yet involved in crypto. In less developed countries, people are eager to make money fast to escape inflation and poverty, which makes them easier targets for scams. Honestly, after eight or nine years in this industry, I've found fewer people care about freedom and privacy than you'd expect. They care about escaping inflation.
Building something daring? Sunny talks to founders like this every day. Fifteen minutes to see if your story belongs on the stage.
Claim your pre-interview