Wences Casares

Wenceslao Casares, also known as Wences Casares (born 26 February 1974) is an Argentinian entrepreneur and businessman in Silicon Valley-based fintech.[1][2] He is the CEO of Xapo Bank, and founded Internet Argentina, Wanako Games, Patagon, Lemon Wallet, and Banco Lemon.[3] Casares sits on the boards of PayPal, Diem, and Endeavor.[4][5][6]

Wences Casares
Casares in 2022
Born
Wenceslao Casares

(1974-02-26) 26 February 1974
Gobernador Costa, Chubut, Patagonia, Argentina
EducationHarvard University, University of San Andrés
OccupationCEO of Xapo

Early life

Casares is the eldest of four from a family of sheep ranchers in Patagonia, Argentina.[1] In high school, Casares earned a Rotary Club scholarship as an exchange student in Washington, Pennsylvania.[5] He returned to Buenos Aires to study business administration for three years at the University of San Andrés and dropped out to launch Argentina's first Internet Service Provider, Internet Argentina S.A. in 1994.[7]

He exited the company and then founded Argentine online brokerage, Patagon, in 1997. Patagon established itself as Latin America's leading comprehensive Internet financial services portal and expanded its online banking services to the United States, Spain, and Germany. Patagon was acquired by the Spanish bank, Banco Santander for $750 million and became Santander Online worldwide.[8] Investors in Patagon included George Soros, Intel, Microsoft, JPMorgan Chase, and entrepreneur Fred Wilson.[3]

Career

In 2002, Casares founded Wanako Games, (later Behaviour Santiago), a videogame developer headquartered in New York City.[9] Wanako Games was best known for the blockbuster game Assault Heroes and was acquired by Activision in 2007.[10][11] In 2002, Casares founded Banco Lemon, a bank based in Brazil, which was acquired by Banco do Brasil in 2009.[12]

Casares was the founder and CEO of Lemon Wallet, a digital wallet platform. In 2013 the American firm LifeLock bought Lemon for about $43 million (US).[13][14]

Xapo

Casares is the CEO of Xapo, a bitcoin wallet startup based in Palo Alto, California.[15] Xapo is said to be the largest custodian of bitcoin in the world and is believed to hold as much as $10 billion of the cryptocurrency in underground vaults on five continents, including in a former Swiss military bunker.[16][1] Xapo has raised $40 million from leading Silicon Valley venture capital firms.[17] Widely known as, "Patient Zero", Quartz reported that Casares was the entrepreneur to convince Bill Gates, Reid Hoffman, and other tech veterans in Silicon Valley to invest in bitcoin.[4][18]

Philanthropy

In 2011, Casares was on the jury of the Cartier Women’s Initiative awards.[2] He is a member of the 2017 Class of Henry Crown Fellows in the Aspen Global Leadership Network at the Aspen Institute. He is an elected member of the World Economic Forum's “Young Global Leaders” Class of 2011 and regularly attends the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting in Davos, Switzerland.[19] He is a member of the Young Presidents' Organization. In 2010 Casares partnered with Pablo Bosch to found Las Majadas de Pirque, a social capital and innovation facility owned by Casares in Santiago, Chile.[20][21] He was formerly a board member at Kiva and Endeavor.[4][5]

References
  1. "The Wealthy Are Hoarding $10 Billion of Bitcoin in Bunkers". Bloomberg.com. Retrieved 9 May 2018.
  2. "Entrepreneur Wences Casares Believes in Bitcoin's Social Change Potential". Inno & Tech Today. 5 March 2019. Retrieved 10 March 2019.
  3. "The Difference between $1 Billion-Plus in Exits and 'Success'". Techcrunch. Retrieved 29 October 2018.
  4. "The simple formula for becoming a bitcoin millionaire, according to one of its innovators". Quartz. 23 May 2017. Retrieved 29 October 2018.
  5. "Wences Casares: Reluctant serial entrepreneur". USA Today. Retrieved 29 October 2018.
  6. "Libra Association announces new board members after recent departures". The Verge. 14 October 2019. Retrieved 28 November 2019.
  7. "WENCES CASARES: THE RELUCTANT SERIAL ENTREPRENEUR". OZY. Retrieved 27 November 2018.
  8. "An Argentine Serial Entrepreneur's $750 Million "Mistake"". Inc.com. 14 December 2011. Retrieved 9 May 2018.
  9. "Chilean startup focuses on games for social good". VentureBeat. 18 November 2009. Retrieved 9 May 2018.
  10. "Vivendi Acquires Wanako Games". Gamasutra. 20 February 2007. Retrieved 28 December 2016.
  11. "Behaviour closes Santiago studio". GamesIndustry.biz. Retrieved 9 May 2018.
  12. "Banco do Brasil Acquires Banco Lemon Correspondent Branch Network," NS Banking, July 15, 2009.
  13. "Lemon sold to LifeLock for $42.6 million". Bizjournals.com. Retrieved 28 December 2016.
  14. "The legal battle between LifeLock and Xapo just got more intense". Fortune. Retrieved 9 May 2018.
  15. Swisher, Kara (13 March 2014). "Lemon Digital Wallet Founder Wenceslao Casares Gets $20 Million in Funding for Bitcoin Startup Xapo". Re/Code. Retrieved 12 May 2014.
  16. "How Bitcoin may have more impact than the internet". Business Insider. 11 February 2015. Retrieved 28 December 2016.
  17. O'Kane, Sean (29 August 2014). "Meet the man building the Fort Knox of bitcoin". The Verge. Retrieved 28 December 2016.
  18. "Bitcoin is 10 years old today - here's a look back at its crazy history (BITCOIN)". Business Insider. Retrieved 27 November 2018.
  19. Matt Clinch (22 January 2015). "Bitcoin finds a place among the world's elite". Cnbc.com. Retrieved 28 December 2016.
  20. "Las Majadas de Pirque: el capital social como modelo de negocios". Bloomberg. Retrieved 10 March 2019.
  21. "PAUTA Bloomberg capital social". Bloomberg. Retrieved 10 March 2019.
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