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Santiago R. Santos Left JPMorgan to Embrace Web3 Full-Time - Crypto News Flash
Santiago R. Santos is not the typical investor who only shows up when the market is hot, then disappears when crypto cools down. His life journey has been a winding one, full of branches, starting on a path far removed from NFTs or DAOs.
He started his career at JPMorgan, entering the highly structured traditional financial system. But, whether out of curiosity or fascination with new ways of moving value, he slowly got off that path.
Santiago R. Santos: From Private Equity to Early DeFi Investor at Parafi
After working at a private equity firm and even getting a taste of healthcare through Elysium Health, Santiago’s life direction began to change. When he joined Parafi Capital, a well-known name in the DeFi space, he really began to explore what a world without intermediaries was.
At that time, there was not much talk about tokenization or smart contract-based lending, but Santiago was already taking steps there.
At Parafi, he didn’t just put money into digital assets. He was involved in early investments in projects that are now the foundation of Web3, like Aave, Uniswap, and The Graph. The result? Some positions grew more than 50-fold. But more than that, he began to develop a different view of how the future of finance could work—without banks, without big institutions, and directly to users.
Leaving the Comfort Zone and Entering the World of Community
After leaving Parafi, Santiago did not stop. Instead, he became more active, moving as an independent investor and directly targeting the roots of Web3 growth. He spread his investments across dozens of early-stage projects, not just because of the potential returns, but because he believes that many brilliant ideas come from small, focused and passionate communities.
Some of his close friends even call him a Web3 nomad. Sometimes he appears in Twitter spaces, sometimes pops up on podcasts discussing DAOs, or occasionally appears on NFT community forums. He is part of PleasrDAO, a collective group that combines digital art and collective ownership.
Furthermore, Santiago is actively promoting the concept of community ownership—highlighting the importance of a more equitable distribution of value, not just for early investors or project founders.
Interestingly, even though he is no longer part of a big VC firm, he still collaborates with big names like Paradigm and Coinbase Ventures. He even invested with Vitalik Buterin. For Santiago, as long as the project has a clear vision and an active community, team size or initial token holdings are not a barrier.
On the other hand, he has been quite vocal about the importance of on-chain data in investment decision-making—rather than just following trends.
Recently, he has been involved in a project called Inversion, which he says is trying to build something that goes beyond the usual blockchain consensus layer. He has also mentioned that he wants to create a kind of private equity fund, but with an approach that is imbued with crypto principles. Who knows what that will ultimately look like, but his style is always intriguing.