Hashdex’s vision for digital finance: Stablecoins, trust, and crypto’s future

When Bruno Caratori first heard his longtime friend and co-founder, Marcelo Sampaio, evangelizing Bitcoin in 2012, he thought it was absurd. “He was already trying to convince everybody and their grandmother to buy something that had no intrinsic value,” Caratori recalled, laughing. “What are you doing?”

More than a decade later, Caratori is the co-founder, along with Sampaio, of Hashdex, one of the world’s leading crypto asset managers, overseeing billions in digital investment products. What changed? “When Ethereum came out, I realized my intellectual error,” he told InvestmentNews during Future Proof Festival last month. “It makes you question things you didn’t know you needed to question. Bitcoin’s innovation wasn’t just electronic cash — it was that a group of people could achieve consensus without a central authority. That’s bigger than digital gold. It’s a whole new infrastructure.”

That realization led Caratori, now COO, and Sampaio to found Hashdex in early 2018. It’s mission: To bring high-quality, regulated, and broad crypto exposure to investors around the world. “From the very first day, our vision has been the same,” Caratori said. “Bringing high-quality, broad crypto exposure with the same governance and security practices investors expect in traditional markets.”

Their partnership with NASDAQ was a turning point. “We sought the best partners out there,” Caratori said. “In 2020, we co-developed the NASDAQ Crypto Index, which became the benchmark for our products. It was a major validation that institutions were starting to take this space seriously.”

Brazil beginnings

Hashdex’s journey began in Brazil, a country that turned out to be surprisingly fertile ground for crypto innovation. “We always had our eyes set on the US,” Caratori said, “But back then the regulatory environment here was really tough. Brazil, on the other hand, started to open up very early.”

By 2021, the company had built an enormous presence there, with over $1 billion in assets under management and a full suite of funds. “Out of Brazil alone, that’s a really big amount for crypto,” he said. “We became the dominant player.”

Gerry O’Shea, Hashdex’s Head of Global Market Insights, joined in 2021 as the company began expanding beyond Latin America. “The way I think about it,” O’Shea said, “is that regulators kind of raised this industry down in Brazil. It’s gone from Latin America to Europe to the US over the last few years.”

Now, with Hashdex’s new NASDAQ Crypto Index (NCI) products available to US investors, the firm’s focus has shifted firmly to the American market. “The US is finally embracing this,” O’Shea said. “For years, we lagged behind, but now we’re catching up.”

Caratori believes Brazil’s early leadership in crypto adoption comes down to lived experience. “People outside the US have a need for a store of value that’s hard for Americans to empathize with,” he said. “I grew up during hyperinflation in Brazil. I remember when we had to cut zeros off our currency. You learn you can’t always trust the guardian of your money.”

That distrust made Brazilians quick to embrace non-sovereign assets such as Bitcoin. “Gold is great, but it’s hard to own, hard to transfer, hard to sell,” he said. “Bitcoin is invisible, fixed supply, non-sovereign. People jumped on it.”

He also suspected US regulators’ slow response wasn’t purely bureaucratic. “My conspiracy theory,” he said, “is that the US has an ideological stance against crypto because it threatens the system it benefits from. We control the world’s reserve currency and most of the gold reserves. Now this technology comes along that we can’t control.”

Brazilian regulators, by contrast, saw an opportunity. “When we proposed regulated crypto funds, they said, ‘How will you keep investors protected?’ We said, ‘You think they’re protected now? They’re buying on offshore exchanges. Bring it into the light, use the rules you already have.’ They said yes — and that’s why we were able to launch products so early.”

A broader case for crypto

For O’Shea, crypto’s promise extends well beyond Bitcoin. “Bitcoin has solved the store-of-value problem,” he said, “but now we’re seeing real-world utility with stablecoins. Most investors don’t realize that the US recently passed a law essentially embracing them. The Treasury Secretary even said this market could grow 10- or 20-fold in five years.”

Stablecoins, he said, are powered by smart-contract platforms like Ethereum and Solana — technologies that make instant, borderless payments possible. “Soon I’ll be able to send dollars from my phone to someone in Brazil or Italy in seconds, without a bank,” he said. “That’s where the real utility is.”

For investors and advisors, O’Shea said, simplicity will be key. “No one wants to pick winners from tens of thousands of crypto assets. That’s why our index approach matters — it evolves with the market and gives you diversified exposure to real use cases without having to choose between Ethereum or Solana. Advisors understand that model.”

Utility and trust

For both Caratori and O’Shea, the next era of crypto will be defined by real-world applications — especially stablecoins and tokenized assets — and by improving the user experience. “Crypto is powerful,” Caratori said, “but it’s still hard to use. Entrepreneurs need to make it easier. That’s happening now.”

At the same time, O’Shea believes the conversation around money itself is shifting. “Crypto has sparked a conversation about what money really is,” he said. “We’ve been spoiled in the US by having a stable reserve currency. But now, with inflation and fiscal uncertainty, people are asking questions they never asked before. And younger investors — they’re already comfortable with digital assets.”

Trust, in his view, will come through transparency and professionalism. “There are millions of tokens out there,” O’Shea said. “Ninety-nine percent of them won’t matter. But having an institutional-grade index that filters for quality — that’s how you build trust.”

Future transformation

Looking ahead, Caratori believes the biggest transformations are imminent. “Large shifts are upon us in a way we still can’t understand,” he says. “The market for stablecoins is going to be enormous. When you make it easy for billions of people to own dollars, they will. And Bitcoin lets anyone own digital gold with a smartphone. This is happening right now.”

Governments, he predicts, will have no choice but to adapt. “Maybe the good outcome is that they become more disciplined,” he said. “I don’t know exactly what’s going to happen — but it’s going to change everything.”

O’Shea agreed. “It always feels like the next 12 months in crypto will be eventful,” he said. “But this time — it really does feel like a shift.”