Sebastian Serrano was born in Buenos Aires on April 4, 1981. He is an Argentine entrepreneur and software developer, a specialist in Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies, and CEO and co-founder of Ripio, a financial technology company based on blockchain technology. Ripio is one of the first and largest crypto companies in Latin America and currently has over 300,000 users.
The life of Sebastian Serrano
Sebastian Serrano was born in Buenos Aires, but shortly after, his family moved to Choele Choel, a city located in the province of Río Negro, in the Patagonia region. During his adolescence, he learned software programming and helped develop the first internet service provider in his hometown. He later studied Computer Science at the Universidad Nacional de La Plata.
Sebastian held important roles in several fintech startups such as Paymentez, Moni, and MetaTiendas. He also served as Network Security Administrator at the Ministry of Economy of the Province of Buenos Aires and as CTO at Internet Winds AG S.A. In 2007, he founded devsAr, a web and mobile software development company for startups across Latin America, based in Argentina. In 2012, he became interested in the potential of cryptocurrencies and created BitPagos, the first bitcoin payment processor in Latin America.
Sebastian Serrano and Ripio
In 2014, Sebastian and part of his former team at BitPagos launched Ripio, a web and mobile application that offers various blockchain-based services such as a digital wallet, fiat-to-crypto brokerage, and credit and payment solutions.
At the end of 2015, the company acquired Unisend—at that time, the only peso-to-bitcoin exchange in Argentina—and by mid-2016, Ripio became the first crypto wallet to offer online loans, enabling payments and 30-day plans to make online purchases without the need for a credit card or bank account.
In 2017, Ripio launched a project called Ripio Credit Network (RCN), conceived as a peer-to-peer credit protocol based on Ethereum that connects lenders and borrowers anywhere in the world and in any currency through smart contracts. A token sale associated with the RCN project raised $37 million in cryptocurrencies.
In 2018, Ripio was the only Argentine company included in the Fintech100 list, a ranking made by KPMG that selects the most innovative startups of the year.
In 2019, Ripio was selected by Visa for its startup acceleration program in Brazil and by Google for the Launchpad Accelerator program in Mexico.
Ripio has been funded by Silicon Valley investors such as Tim Draper, Pantera Capital, Medici Ventures, Digital Finance Group, and Digital Currency Group, and has raised over $6 million in several investment rounds.