WENCES Casares has become known as ‘patient zero’ of Bitcoin for introducing cryptocurrency to Silicon Valley billionaires.
But what is the story behind Casares and what is the Xapo founder’s net worth?
Who is Wences Casares?
Wences Casares was born on February 26, 1974 and is the eldest of four from a family of sheep farmers in Patagonia, Argentina.
Casares earned a scholarship and moved to Washington, Pennsylvania when he was young but returned to Buenos Aires to study business administration for three years at the University of San Andrés.
He eventually dropped out to launch Argentina’s first Internet Service Provider, Internet Argentina in 1994.
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He then went on to found Argentine online brokerage, Patagon, in 1997.
Patagon was acquired by Spanish bank Santander for $750 million and eventually became Santander Online worldwide.
But Casares wasn’t done there.
In 2002, he founded Wanako Games, a video game developer that is best known for Assault Heroes and was acquired by Activision in 2007.
Casares also founded Banco Lemon, a bank based in Brazil, in 2002 which was acquired by Banco do Brasil in 2009.
He also founded Lemon Wallet, a digital wallet platform, which was bought by LifeLock for $43 million in 2013.
Casares is currently the CEO of Xapo, a Bitcoin wallet, which is believed to be the largest custodian of Bitcoin in the world and holds around $10 billion BTC.
Xapo has raised around $40 million in funding.
But Casares is best known as ‘patient zero’ for convincing billionaire tycoons such as Bill Gates to invest in Bitcoin.
Casares first came across Bitcoin while attempting to send money to friends in Argentina.
He said: “I first learned about Bitcoin in 2011.
“I live in California, in Palo Alto, and a group of childhood friends from Argentina were doing a project where we needed to send money to that project.
“And I couldn’t send money from California to Argentina, so I was looking to see if my sister, who’s there, could give the friends some money and I could pay her later.
“And one of my friends – who’s not tech savvy or financially savvy – said, ‘Hey, why don’t you use Bitcoin?’
“So, I was curious and I looked it up online, and, I think on Craigslist, I found someone who was willing to meet with me at the cafe in Palo Alto and gave me some Bitcoin and I gave them the cash.
“Then, I just got the Bitcoin on my cell phone and I sent them to my friend in Argentina and the next day he has Argentine pesos.
“And I just couldn’t believe what happened.”
What is Wences Casares’ net worth?
Wences Casares has a net worth of $25 million, which he’s accumulated from founding a series of businesses.
Casares’ advice is to “take 1 per cent or less of what you own, buy Bitcoin with it, and then forget about it for at least the next five years; ideally the next decade. You either lose one percent of your net worth, which most people can take, or you make millions.”
He added: “If it fails, it will be worthless.
“If it succeeds, in five to seven years one Bitcoin will be worth more than a million dollars.
“The world used to have a global standard of settlement for 5,000 years and it was gold.
“If you wanted to compare how much it cost Cleopatra to put together an army to how much it cost a Chinese emperor, it was straightforward. We don’t have that today.”
“Whereas gold was difficult to settle, requiring cumbersome storage and transport, it’s trivially easy to do so with Bitcoin.
“If Bitcoin succeeds I believe it will be the biggest leap forward in the democratization of money we have ever seen.”