Before Andres Meneses became a familiar face on some of the world’s largest cryptocurrency stages, his relationship with money was far more immediate. It was about survival, sending money home and finding a way forward when traditional options often felt out of reach. That experience would eventually lead the Colombian entrepreneur into Bitcoin, but more importantly, it would shape the philosophy behind the career he has built since.
Born in Colombia, Meneses has spoken openly about growing up through periods of severe financial hardship. His journey later took him to Europe, where life was not immediately easier. He has described sleeping in a mechanic’s garage, relying on food banks and taking whatever work was available while trying to create a better future. Those years sit in sharp contrast to his life today in Dubai, where he operates across technology, media, Web3 and entrepreneurship, but they remain central to understanding why he approaches the digital economy the way he does.
His entry into cryptocurrency came in 2016, not because he was searching for the next investment trend, but because he was trying to send money from the United Kingdom to his family in Colombia. In that process, he discovered Bitcoin and began to understand the broader potential of blockchain technology. For someone who had personally experienced the friction of moving money across borders, the idea of a decentralized financial system was not simply theoretical.
Meneses had a technical foundation to build upon. With a background in engineering, technology and digital design, he was already comfortable operating in a world shaped by software and rapidly changing digital platforms. Cryptocurrency gave those interests a new direction, bringing together technology, finance and his own experiences of economic exclusion.
The journey, however, was anything but linear. By 2019, Meneses says he had lost everything. Rather than disappear from the industry, he made a decision that would become one of the defining moments of his career: he began investing what remained into building his personal brand and communicating what he was learning publicly.
Instagram became an early platform for that reinvention. Instead of speaking only to sophisticated traders, Meneses began producing content designed to make crypto and Web3 easier to understand for ordinary people. That ability to translate a technical subject into accessible stories would later become one of his strongest competitive advantages.
By 2022, his profile had grown substantially. Meneses appeared at Binance’s fifth anniversary celebrations and launched Crypto OGs, a Web3 podcast that would go on to establish a substantial audience on Binance Live. Crypto OGs has since developed into a multi award winning platform and is approaching 200 episodes, with conversations spanning blockchain, entrepreneurship, investing and the personalities shaping the digital economy. Binance’s own platform currently shows Meneses with more than 82,000 followers, while his broader public audience across platforms has been reported at more than 1.5 million people.
His reach has increasingly moved beyond content creation and into major industry platforms. Meneses has appeared around events including TOKEN2049, Binance Blockchain Week, Paris Blockchain Week, AIBC World and SiGMA Eurasia. His work has also included collaborations with major exchanges. In 2023, OKX featured him in its global “Trade Like a Pro” campaign, positioning him as one of the real users and personalities helping the company communicate with an international trading audience.
Recognition followed that visibility. Meneses has been associated with Entrepreneur Middle East’s Top 100 entrepreneurs and Arabian Business recognition within the crypto sector, while Blockchain Magazine named him among its Top Crypto Influencers in 2025. His own business ecosystem today extends beyond Crypto OGs into ventures involving Web3, AI, media and technology.
Yet the part of his story that arguably carries the greatest weight is not the stages or rankings. It is the distance between where he started and where he has arrived.
Meneses has built his audience in both English and Spanish, giving him an unusual ability to connect Latin America, the Middle East and the wider global technology community. That cross cultural reach reflects his own journey and increasingly defines his role: less as a commentator on crypto and more as a bridge between communities that are experiencing digital finance from very different starting points.
His latest focus on prediction markets continues that theme. Meneses believes they could become another gateway toward broader participation in blockchain based products by making complex technology more relevant to everyday events, information and decision making.
For someone whose introduction to Bitcoin began with the simple need to move money home, that evolution feels fitting. Andres Meneses’ career has ultimately been built around making emerging technology more understandable, more human and more connected to real life.
His story is not simply one of succeeding in cryptocurrency. It is one of repeatedly rebuilding, and then using each reinvention to create a larger platform than the one that came before.
