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The J Curve With Marcelo Sampaio, CEO at Hashdex: Five Big Ideas

Author

Olga Maslikhova
January 30, 2024

Hi everyone,

Welcome to the first 2024 edition of Five Big Ideas newsletter in which we deconstruct main practical ideas from our The J Curve conversations with the best entrepreneurs and investors in Latin America.

My guest this week is Marcelo Sampaio, founder and CEO at Brazilian crypto asset manager Hashdex, that has raised over $117m from the likes of Coinbase Ventures, SoftBank Latin America Fund and Valor Capital. Prior to that, Marcelo was the youngest sales director at Oracle ever promoted to that position.

Before we get to Five Big Ideas, here’s some curious market data on bitcoin and crypto:


✅ The Bitcoin technology market size is estimated at USD 14.75 billion in 2024, and is expected to reach USD 25.33 billion by 2029, growing at a CAGR of 11.42% during the forecast period

✅ Blockchain technology could boost global GDP by 1.76 trillion or 1.4% by 2030 🤯 

✅ The highest distribution of blockchain market value is observed in the banking sector (29.7% market share in 2023), process manufacturing (11.4%), discrete manufacturing (10.9%), professional services (6.6%), retail (6%), and others (35.3%)

✅ Blockchain spending will grow at the fastest rate in the professional service industry, with a CAGR estimated at 54%, followed by 43.97% by healthcare and 48.2% respectively by state and federal government. (Source: IDC)

Here are the FIVE big ideas from our conversation with Marcelo 🧐💡👇🏻:

1️⃣ The long-term impact of crypto will be bigger than that of AI

Crypto is the paradigm shift, ‘new internet’ while AI is more of a platform shift. E-commerce cannot be bigger than internet, AI cannot be bigger than crypto 🧐 

2️⃣ Brazil emerges as a key global crypto powerhouse

The main driving force is Brazilian Central Bank’s progressive, proactive and collaborative regulatory approach. Other factors include social, political and economic instability as well as firm belief that crypto can catalyze financial inclusion

3️⃣ Retail investors should approach crypto-investing with a long-term perspective and limit their exposure to a very little % of their net networth

Crypto is extremely volatile in the short run with a huge potential upside in the long run

4️⃣ The recent SEC approval of 11 ETFs will potentially drive the adoption of crypto by wider audience

The Bitcoin ETF space is shaping up to be highly competitive with digitally natives having an advantage over incumbents

5️⃣ Rio is not just about Carnaval and beautiful beaches, it has a number of competitive advantages for 0 to 1 stage startups

Those advantages include less competition than in São Paulo and great talent coming from local universities

You can watch the two-part interview on Youtube 👇🏻

Or listen / watch the episode on Spotify 🎧

Marcelo Sampaio, CEO at SEC approved ETF Hashdex: Crypto Is the New Internet

Listen to this episode from The J Curve with Olga Maslikhova on Spotify. Welcome to Season 3 of The J Curve, a podcast about entrepreneurship in Latin America. My guest today is Marcelo Sampaio, founder and CEO at Hashdex, Brazilian crypto asset manager backed by the likes of Coinbase Ventures, SoftBank and Valor Capital. Hashdex is the only LatAm spot bitcoin ETF among 11 ETFs recently cleared by the US Securities and Exchange Commission in the event that some called a watershed moment for crypto adoption. Please note, that this is a two-part conversation. The first part follows our regular format in which we deconstruct Marcelo’s personal leadership and talk about the pivotal stages and critical lessons of his career. In the second part of our conversation, we talk about what the recent SEC approval means for the industry, its pros and cons as well as the real-world application of crypto and bitcoins. In today's episode we will discuss:  1. Lessons from Oracle: how to win at enterprise sales? 2. Bitcoin fundamentals: why open-source is important for blockchain and vice versa? 3. From LatAm to the world: what's the next billion dollar company nobody's building yet? 4. AI or Crypto: which will have the bigger Impact? 5. The game of law: why cryptocurrencies should be regulated? If you would like to get more insight from LatAm's leading tech founders and investors, subscribe to our new ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠YouTube channel⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and follow us on ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Spotify⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ or ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Apple⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.  Follow Olga on ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠LinkedIn⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ or ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Olga is an entrepreneur, venture capital investor, mentor at Techstars and founder at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠The J Curve⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, Latin America's leading English speaking podcast about tech builders. She's been investing in the USA, SEA and Latin America for over 13 years. Companies she backed include tech unicorn ClassPass (acquired by Mindbody) and Vitalk (acquired by Gympass). --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/olgamaslikhova/message

open.spotify.com/episode/1kwGyU5sntfePfsZEDuZmU?si=9LdxNKsOQr-kgjDVRHldSw

Thanks for reading,

Olga