Insights from Rafael Santamaría’s Journey in Blockchain

Born as the youngest of five in Medellín, Colombia, I grew up in a family that pioneered technology in our country. My great-uncle, Peter Santamaría, brought Colombia’s first computer, and my father, Federico Santamaría, was Microsoft’s first distribution partner here and even introduced Medellín’s first Internet connection.

Early Awakening and Panama

When I was a kid, my father’s company collapsed, and we fled to Panama seeking new opportunities. Overnight, we went from a comfortable life to yard-selling my toys and then to wondering how we’d pay the bills. Yet I never felt deprived; my parents somehow kept us feeling abundant. In Panama, I entered a bilingual school and learned English—the doors it opened were life-changing (all the content I consume today is in English, and my favorite work meetings too).

At the beginning it seemed like a nightmare; I couldn't understand anything. I hid in the nursery with a kind nurse who spoke Spanish to me and did homework with an extracurricular tutor. I also faced discrimination for being Colombian, which taught me valuable lessons in resilience. Four years later, we returned to Colombia, but now I could speak English as no one in my class did (that was Panama’s greatest gift).

School Years and Academic Journey

Back in Medellín, I was the kid who organized every celebration—I still am, in fact! I love bringing people together and making everyone feel comfortable (sometimes I like to play chemistry and put together people from different places, for example school friends with job friends, etc. Not always chemistry was good, but I still tried).

After high school, I chose a public university so as not to burden my family further (being the younger one makes you have a lot of consciousness about all the effort parents made) and reaffirm my talent for math, logic, and complex topics—always a step ahead of the curriculum, almost like recalling knowledge from past lives. I really flowed and made incredibly hard tasks almost effortless, enjoying all my learning process like playing my favorite video game.

I began studying Administration Engineering but switched to Control Engineering after hearing a course claim, “money equals happiness.” I wanted an intellectual challenge over quick earnings, topped my class every semester, graduated with honors, and earned a full scholarship for a master’s in industrial automation—complete with the best grades and even got paid for studying. It felt like heaven.

Launching My Career at the National University of Colombia

While pursuing my master’s at the National University, I joined a research group as a test analyst. Our mission: build Latin America’s first accredited testing lab for next-generation telecommunications in the power sector. Despite the leadership seeming ready to abandon ship, I believed in our project. I soon rose to lab coordinator, and in 2018 we achieved accreditation—the first of its kind in Latin America.

Shortly after, I suffered a severe bike accident. Our contracts were “service contracts,” so I didn’t have formal protections—I still had schedules, subordination, and no social security. But I arranged with my boss to work from home. Even injured, I gave it my all: two days a week in the lab, cybersecurity courses on the side, trudging up five flights of stairs when the elevator broke (almost always). When I look back, I can't help but think, God, I had to love what I did to get through all of that.

However, behind my back some colleagues grew jealous of my remote-work arrangement and tried to undermine me with the director. Thankfully, he valued my contributions and shut it down. That betrayal broke my heart, the team I used to inspire to achieve their biggest potential had stabbed me in the back, but taught me a valuable lesson. Follow your intuition, value yourself and the energy you give to others over everything, only share it with those who really deserve it, and giving will always make you bigger (when you give, you grow), even if they don't give back.

Spiritual Awakening

During recovery, I stumbled on my parents’ bookshelf: The Law of Attraction. When I opened it, I found a photo of my late grandfather hugging me as a child—a clear message to read on. That book sparked a deep spiritual journey. Soon I found The Kybalion and other books my grandmother seemed to whisper for me to discover, some of them felt like reading my own ideas on old books, assuring what I taught about life was even written as universal laws.

These teachings have guided me ever since, today I study Kabbalah and spiritual teachings everyday. I guess my soul is hungry, and I just keep feeding it, but more important than learning is applying all these teachings to my day-to-day life and sharing with anyone who might seem to need hearing about it or just having profound conversations with my loved ones and colleagues.

Discovering Bitcoin and Web3

My oldest brother introduced me to Bitcoin; he has always been a kind of misfit or a cypherpunk, always looking for new stuff and looking for mind freedom. He even used to mine at home on a shared computer we had for the family; some of his bitcoins might be in a dumpster lost (making BTC even more scarce). He didn't keep working on this; he still uses crypto but moved to other topics for his hungry mind; however, sharing it with me completely changed my life. In November 2016, I nervously bought 0.25 BTC for aprox $175 on LocalBitcoins from a seller named “Nelita00.” I lost some to a Ponzi scheme—my fault, not the protocol’s. I learned the hard way that handing funds to third parties carries huge risks.

Curious, I dove into Ethereum. Around the same time, the lab director asked if we knew about Bitcoin (it's like the law of attraction. I was thinking about a lot of projects that could be done with my new knowledge, but he spoke first, like if reading my mind). My colleagues and I eagerly said yes—Codensa, our biggest client, wanted blockchain research. We launched several projects:

• Energy prosumer tokenization: enabling solar panel owners to feed energy into the grid in exchange for tokens—using the blockchain as a virtual battery. It was mind-blowing seeing my homemade domotics projects acquired knowledge could integrate with my newly acquired web3 concepts. Web3 and IoT, two of the major fourth industrial revolution technologies, working together.

• Protecting substation communications: an ambitious failure, since public blockchains couldn’t handle sub-5 ms message speeds. We learned plenty from that one! And I wasn't really interested in following the research on private blockchains (that could achieve this response time); since the beginning I knew public was the way, or at least my way.

First Entrepreneurial Steps

An electrical engineer friend, Eduardo Ospina, encouraged me to enter the “Capital Semilla” local entrepreneurship contest. Together with a crypto lab partner, I co-founded a startup later called Bits Dapps. We won the contest, and some others after, we received mentorship and funding, and took on our first clients: the research group and then Eduardo’s spin-off, Unergy.io, which crowdfunded solar-farm revenue via smart contracts. Today I still think this is a complete game changer and they keep delivering new stuff everyday, really proud to have added my part at the early stage of this amazing project.

Web3 Notary and Certibits

We then ventured into legal tech with an MVP called Solemne.tech—a blockchain-powered contract and NDA signature tool that even hid gas fees from users. It was too complex for its time, so we pivoted to Certibits, a white-label web3 notary that encouraged users to adopt non-custodial wallets and learn about gas fees. Certibits placed third in the Latin America Celo hackathon.

Surviving the Pandemic with Crypto Arbitrage

2020 hit hard: clients stopped paying, and I had to lay everyone off. My wife and I moved to a rural area—safer for her arthritis-vulnerable health, we turned my parent’s spare room into a tiny apartment. We pivoted to crypto arbitrage: teaching my wife to use Binance P2P, we bought BTC 5% below market and sold at rate. It was tough but proved my adaptability and had the opportunity to onboard family and friends into crypto.

Sharing Knowledge and Building White-Label DApps

Even during the crisis, I spoke at free local conferences, solidifying my reputation as a web3 expert and attracting education clients (worked with some of the best universities giving web3 lectures). One of my favorite things is sharing knowledge. I love the “aha” moment when people finally understand blockchain and crypto. My vision evolved, rather than endless custom builds, I wanted scalable white-label DApps.

We built:

• TokenBits: ERC-20 token generator with wallet interface
  

• NFTBits: white-label NFT explorer and backend
  

• Certibits: our trusted notary solution (from our previous hackathon)

I learned a lot of marketing and creating content on instagram to promote them too.

Embracing My Spanish Roots

After five years gathering genealogical records and traveling to Spain—including a notary signing in 2021—I secured Spanish nationality as a Sephardic descendant. I fell in love with Spain and vowed to return annually. Since 2021 I’ve balanced vacation and work (while going to the notary trip I won third place at the Celo virtual hackathon working at night with my colleague), attending Celo Connect 202 2(won this time the first place in person with my wife), Blockchain Paris Week 2023, and Fireblocks Spark 2024 (awarded with Wenia).

Celo Connect 2022 Hackathon: Rockstars in Barcelona

In 2022, my wife and I won a Celo Connect scholarship and joined the in-person hackathon. Despite arriving on Sunday for a Friday–Sunday event, we sprinted—literally—six blocks through a marathon route to make the final presentation. Our project: a genealogy NFT collection of handmade beanies by Colombian artisans, with proceeds partly donated to children’s cancer foundations. We nabbed first place and the sustainability award—and became “rockstars” overnight. It was pure magic: strong tech, powerful storytelling, and working shoulder-to-shoulder with my wife, whose sustainable fashion brand, Genealogy, shares my mission for a fairer, more connected world.

From Founder to Corporate Leader

After five years as the sole surviving founder of Bits DApps, I realized clients demanded endless customization and our white-label solutions were being outpaced by fast-moving players like Alchemy and Moralis, so I craved a simpler life: joining a large team, learning from top talent, and focusing on my passion—building meaningful tech.

A serendipitous moment in 2022 changed everything: after correcting a “crypto mastermind” community member about a wallet-hacking trick, I was approached by Bancolombia Group’s secret crypto research team. Though initially skeptical—aren’t banks web3’s natural enemies?—their vision of public-network integration and genuine decentralization resonated deeply, and we negotiated a great package that allowed me to start consulting for them while winding down Bits DApps.

Soon they offered me a full-time role, and I closed my company—transitioning my clients directly to my trusted developers—finally gaining the stability I’d longed for: no more quarterly contracts, no more working through injuries, just steady paychecks and the freedom to innovate. Then, on March 31, 2024, my lifelong dream came true when my son Joaquín was born, and this role gave me the security to welcome him into the world and build an abundant, decentralized future for my family.

Building COPW at Wenia

At Wenia (Bancolombia’s crypto arm), I helped deploy COPW, Colombia’s first regulated stablecoin:

• Led audits with CertiK and OpenZeppelin, then re-audited with Chainlink Proof of Reserve
  

• Designed an MPC-powered smart contract management tool integrated with Fireblocks.
  

• Developed new features Fireblocks didn’t yet support (Solana Gas Station, Ripple deployment for B2B). Fireblocks spark 2024 award winners.

• Awarded “Crypto Evangelist” for driving Web3 adoption internally
  

Launched in May 2024, COPW now bridges bank accounts and crypto.

Onward & Upward

Today, with each milestone behind me, I’m energized to keep writing new chapters: collaborating with visionary teams, mentoring future blockchain leaders, and turning audacious ideas into tangible products. Let’s build the next wave of decentralized innovation together.