Our next guest of the broadcast joins us now remotely.
Santiago Roel Santos is the CEO of Inversion.
Santiago, it is great to have you here joining us here on taking stock.
First and foremost, give us an introduction for anyone who might be a bit unfamiliar to your work at Inversion and what are some of your top priorities here in 2026?
Thanks for having me on, JD.
Uh, conversion is a private equity fund.
We think that blockchain is a very powerful technology that can make businesses more efficient.
We're set out to acquire businesses, partner with management teams that see the potential of the technology.
Been investing in crypto for over a decade and so the technology has come such a long way.
It's regulated now, you know, tokenization, stablecoins really can affect and really drive a lot of efficiencies for most businesses.
So that's really the biggest opportunity that we see now is not so much investing in Bitcoin or investing in tokens.
It's really implementing this technology, which is stablecoins and tokenization and, and really drive a lot of efficiencies in businesses that we're looking at.
You've already said Santiago is the technology that you're talking about impacted, if at all, when we see the pricing of the crypto majors fall as much as they have in the case of Bitcoin down almost 50% off of our highs from Monday, October 6.
So, uh Bitcoin is a commodity.
I would separate it from the rest of the crypto market.
When you're talking about a stablecoin, that is a piece of technology that is disconnected from Bitcoin.
You know, companies don't make a decision whether they wanna use AWS or OpenAI or cloud based on the price of these companies.
And that's, unfortunately, the conversation when it comes to crypto is what is the price of these tokens, not so much what can this technology really do to a business.
But even in the public markets, you see a company like Figure Technologies and what they've done in the HELO space.
They've originated $16 billion of HEOs, one of the fastest-growing HEOs, the largest non-bank HELOC in America, and their origination cost is not, you know, is $700 relative to $11,000 for a traditional HELLO company.
And so, they've done all of that with blockchain, with, um, you know, stablecoins, and, and that really is an example of, of what blockchain can do to a business and financial workflows writ large.
And so, that's really what we see from the front lines is the vast opportunity to take inefficient workflows and what I call money for the first time ever is gonna move just in time.
So, if you're a business moving money across border or settling with a counterparty, it's T + 3, T + 20, you're paying 2 to 3 to 4% on processing costs.
Um, so, the analogy is in 1980s, you have just in time manufacturing.
Now, you have just in time money and it's gonna be deeply uh impactful for many, many businesses.
Santiago, we're up against a heartbreak.
Please come back and join us here on Taking Stock anytime.
Santiago Roel Santos, CEO of Inversion.
