Sunny Ray sits down with Sebastian Serrano, founder of Ripio, to trace his path from a childhood in Patagonia, Argentina, coding on a Commodore 64, to building one of Latin America's most important crypto companies. Serrano recounts growing up amid Argentina's recurring economic crises, co-founding his hometown's first internet service provider as a teenager, and later discovering Bitcoin in 2012 while searching for ways to protect value and get paid amid strict capital controls. He describes launching BitPagos, a reverse payment processor, then pivoting to Ripio, a wallet that let Argentinians buy and sell Bitcoin. Serrano details the difficulty of fundraising as an outsider without Silicon Valley pedigree, eventually winning backing from Boost VC, Barry Silbert, Tim Draper, and Pantera. He explains Ripio's growth to over 600,000 users across Argentina and Brazil, its expansion into exchange services, OTC desks, and peer to peer lending, and his belief that Bitcoin represents money becoming programmable software. The conversation closes on why emerging market entrepreneurs are well positioned to build crypto infrastructure and what advice he offers new founders.
Ripio founder Sebastian Serrano on Argentina's crises, discovering Bitcoin, and building crypto access across Latin America.
Where did your story begin and what first got you into technology?
I was born in Buenos Aires but grew up on a farm in Patagonia. My parents met studying political science during a tough period for Argentina. When I was seven or eight I saw a magazine about computers and got fascinated, and my father eventually bought me a used Commodore 64. That's when I started coding, and I was a super nerd from then on, building video games and later co-founding my hometown's first internet service provider.
How did you first come across Bitcoin?
In 2012 there was another crisis in Argentina with strong capital controls, and I was struggling to pay clients and store value because even buying dollars was restricted. I had dismissed Bitcoin the first time I saw it, but this necessity pushed me to explore it again. I did a few transactions, they worked, and I started digging deeper into the technology and mining, eventually attending the first Bitcoin meetups in Buenos Aires.
What specifically convinced you Bitcoin was going to be big?
Being Argentinian makes the value proposition obvious when your currency can drop 80 percent in a year. Knowing exactly how many bitcoins will ever exist made it a far better store of value. But what really struck me was realizing every Bitcoin transaction runs on a script, actual executable code, not just a database entry. That meant money was becoming software with behavior, and I knew that was the future.
How did BitPagos turn into Ripio?
We started with BitPagos doing payment processing, a kind of reverse BitPay where merchants received Bitcoin from card payments. We quickly realized merchants needed someone to buy those bitcoins from them to complete the cycle, and there was no wallet for that in Argentina. So we launched Ripio as the wallet letting people buy and sell Bitcoin, and from there expanded into full infrastructure for crypto access.
What was it like raising your first round as an Argentine founder?
It was brutally hard. Every investor conversation required explaining Bitcoin itself, then why Argentina mattered, then finally the product, a two hour process. I cold reached Adam Draper through a friend's sister, but it didn't land until I met Ben Davenport at a meetup, who introduced me to Adam again in person. That led to Boost VC, then Tim Draper, then Barry Silbert, which finally got us off the ground.
What role did investors like Draper, Silbert, and Pantera play beyond capital?
They were all very helpful, and Pantera was an early investor too, among the best funds in crypto. I think they understood early that crypto had to become a global ecosystem, not just a Silicon Valley phenomenon. They made the thesis that exchanges, wallets, and OTC desks would be needed everywhere, so they sought out local builders like us, similar to backing the Ripio of India or the Coinbase of Africa.
What advice do you have for founders in emerging markets trying to raise funding?
Without a prestigious pedigree, the thing that works is metrics. It's now cheap to build prototypes, especially in tech, and no one argues with real traction. Bootstrap something, get some clients or usage, and show it beyond a deck. If you can validate the idea, it won't matter where you're from, there's a lot of liquid money and investors everywhere now.
Where is Ripio focused today and what comes next?
We now have over 600,000 users, about 400,000 in Argentina and 200,000 in Brazil, plus more across the region. Beyond wallets we run an exchange and one of the largest OTC desks in South America. Since 2017 we've focused heavily on credit, building a protocol called RCN for peer to peer lending, and we believe the next big unlock for DeFi is under collateralized lending once identity and trust are solved.
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