Bruno, a telecommunications and photonics engineer from Patagonia, Argentina, shares how growing up amid chronic inflation and the 2001 banking crisis shaped his understanding of money. After discovering Bitcoin in 2013 among engineering colleagues, he later explored Ethereum before a 2015 overland trip through more than ten Latin American countries exposed him to shared financial struggles across the region. This experience deepened his interest in Bitcoin and blockchain as tools for real world problems rather than speculative price action. In 2018 he entered blockchain development through a hackathon project, which eventually led to co-founding Defiant with Sergio, initially a peer to peer marketplace for trading bitcoin and stablecoins in Argentina. The platform prioritized privacy, minimal KYC, and geolocation for face to face trades. Defiant later evolved into a wallet built on RSK, developed alongside the Money on Chain community and IOVlabs. Bruno reflects on hobby projects growing into serious ventures and his ongoing motivation to build solutions for people facing currency devaluation and limited financial access.
An Argentinian engineer turns lived financial crisis into Defiant, a Bitcoin and RSK peer-to-peer wallet for everyday traders.
Can you tell me a bit about your background and how you first came across Bitcoin?
I'm a telecommunications engineer from Patagonia, Argentina, with a master's in photonics engineering. I worked at Clarify, which designed optical transceivers and was later acquired by Inphi. In that engineering environment I first encountered Bitcoin around 2013. I had a decent salary at the time and bought some BTC, and later some Ether too, though for years it stayed more of a personal interest than a professional focus.
What was your relationship to money before Bitcoin, growing up in Argentina?
Living in Argentina you can't really be foreign to financial matters. Inflation and currency devaluation are talked about constantly on the news. When I was fourteen, in 2001, we had a massive financial crisis here where people couldn't withdraw money from banks and many lost their savings. So even with wrong concepts sometimes, everyone in Argentina grows up with some awareness of money and banks.
What was your inflection point that pushed you to question your comfort zone and dig deeper into money and Bitcoin?
In 2015 I took a trip with two friends, driving from Argentina all the way to Colombia and back, crossing more than ten Latin American countries. I used some Bitcoin along the way and met people suffering the same financial issues we had at home. That's when I realized this wasn't just an Argentina problem, it was something many countries faced, and it pushed me to think more seriously about money and Bitcoin.
How did you actually make the shift into building on Bitcoin and blockchain?
It started small, almost as a hobby. I was already a developer running a software factory, and I entered a hackathon in early 2018 with a fundraising platform idea on Ethereum. An institutional partner got interested and contracted us to build it. None of my team really knew blockchain well at that point, but we taught ourselves, and that became our first real blockchain project.
How did Defiant come to life?
It started as a side project too. Sergio, one of my co-founders, was more into trading and saw a growing need in Argentina for a platform to easily trade bitcoin and stablecoins peer to peer. He asked if we could build something to match buyers and sellers. We loved the space already, so we built a marketplace for peer to peer crypto trading, without any plan yet for it to become a wallet.
How does the peer-to-peer trading work, and is KYC required?
It's a hybrid model. You can give the platform as much or as little data as you want, no picture, address, or phone number required. All you need is a username, and the system builds reputation through your transaction history. We also offer geolocation so users can find offers near them if they prefer meeting face to face to complete a cash payment.
What happened after the MVP, and how did Defiant evolve into a wallet built on RSK?
The first MVP ran on a centralized server for matching offers, though no sensitive peer information was stored beyond what was needed for the trade. In early 2020 Sergio traveled to Buenos Aires and connected with the Bitcoin community there, which led us to RSK and the Money on Chain project. With RSK's support and grants, we decided to turn Defiant into a wallet, since there was no wallet yet for Money on Chain's coins, and we had the team to focus on features and good UX.
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