Andrea Soto Reig
Head of Growth Partnerships at Bitunix
Your career path before crypto was quite nonlinear. What pulled you into the crypto industry, and what made you decide to stay and build here?
Actually, my core career has always been focused on crypto and blockchain, even before I finished my university studies. It only seems nonlinear because from a very young age, I was managing many other projects in parallel, and I continue to do so today.
My interest in financial markets and stock exchanges began at the age of 15, when I first started learning about the way they work. I read extensively, attended courses, and signed up for countless platforms. Since that time, it was clear to me that my career would be focused there.
Thanks to that background, by the time I turned 18, people on all those platforms started talking about Bitcoin. I became curious, and, eventually, my focus and learning shifted entirely in that direction. To me, it was clearly the future of financial markets, and I understood that I was arriving just in time to ride the wave.
Later, before finishing my Business degree, I was offered a position at a blockchain startup. That was the point where I completely immersed myself in the sector, both professionally and personally. All in all, it reached the stage where I was working in the sector, studying it, and even investing my own money. It was such a fast-paced, dynamic, unpredictable, and profitable market that I knew I wanted to do this for the rest of my life.
The fact that your interest has grown from such a young age is really impressive. Since you mentioned that you caught the wave at the right time, there is a lot of concern among people who want to enter the blockchain that they might have missed the window. Is there actually such a thing as "too late" in that industry?
The problem is that people always want to jump on a wave when it has already passed, yet nobody dares to join the next one, so they end up missing the opportunity again.
From my perspective, the crypto and blockchain sector is still a young industry. This landscape allows you to become a senior professional in a very short period of time, giving you a massive edge in detecting and capitalising on upcoming opportunities.
Moreover, this sector reinvents itself roughly every 2 to 4 years during each bull market, so there is always a window to catch the next wave. In 2020, VCs were losing their minds trying to invest in "mega-futuristic" blockchain startups (which generated zero revenue, and 99% of them later died). In 2024, they deployed that capital into exchanges, the real cash cow of the sector in recent years.
What does this mean? Even if you have been in the industry for a long time, whether you are a VC, a professional, or a retail investor, you sometimes have to pivot your focus really quickly. Therefore, being new to the industry is rarely a disadvantage. One year, you need to be an expert in DeFi, and two years later, you need to be an expert in AI agents.
Your perspective on open opportunities in crypto could truly be inspiring for someone who feels they missed their chances to finally push toward their dreams. Let’s now move to your experience. As a marketer, what do you personally find the hardest in that sphere?
I have come to the conclusion that the ultimate marketing challenge in this industry is getting a non-Web3 user to adopt Web3 technology without even realising it. And I believe that is precisely why we haven't yet managed to get the general public to fully trust this space.
Let me explain: we became obsessed with convincing the world that it needed complex technical solutions. It was especially noticeable during previous bull markets, such as the one in 2020. Take NFTs, for example. Why do people here not just drop the jargon and skip straight to the actual utility?
Imagine we tokenise a property, linking it to a single NFT that represents 100% of the physical property title. Then we complete all its actions and securely record them on the blockchain. To buy it, you simply transfer the payment in USDT or USDC to the seller's digital wallet through a specialised platform. Instantly, the smart contract settles the transaction, transfers legal ownership of the NFT to your wallet, and automatically updates the property registry. Overall, it eliminates all traditional bureaucracy and overhead costs.
Now, if I explain this to someone who doesn't trust the crypto space, which headline do you think would actually convert them?
A) "Buy NFTs based on tokenised real estate assets."
B) "Invest in a property with zero bureaucracy in 10 minutes."
Exactly. The real challenge is to convince the world that blockchain offers practical use cases. We don't even need to name the underlying technology, and it is better to focus solely on the friction-free benefit it delivers.
Since we touched on the crypto community, could you describe the differences you've noticed since moving from Europe to Dubai several years ago? Has living at the heart of the industry changed your professional lifestyle?
Unfortunately, it is very easy to hit a glass ceiling in this industry within Europe. I felt that when I was only 23 or 24, which is why I didn't hesitate to accept the opportunity to move to Dubai. This city is undoubtedly the main global hub for the crypto industry right now.
I believe that anyone who truly wants to scale in this sector needs to be here or in other regions offering similar environments. Otherwise, the odds of major industry players opening their doors for you to collaborate are really slim.
The main difference I see between the European community and Dubai’s one — whether people judge it as good or bad — is the regulation approach. Of course, it is necessary to build rules, but I believe Europe rushed here before even understanding how everything works.
As a result, the crypto ecosystem has preferred to move in regions that are open to exploring technology perspectives and lack the intent to suffocate it. Naturally, that momentum pulls all of us who make a living from it along with it.
The regulatory approach translates directly into the community mindsets. In Europe, there is a constant atmosphere of restraint, a certain fear of innovating. Because who knows which regulatory backlash you will face this time?
In places like Dubai, however, you feel that everybody, including the government itself, believes that everything is possible. It is like the only problem they have is figuring out how to do it right. When they are founded, the regulation will ensure compliance. This 100% changes our professional lifestyle and career. It feels like 1 year working in this industry in the UAE is like 5 years in the same industry in Europe.
This story about regional differences also connects to another part of your experience: you were building a career in crypto while co-running a language school in Spain. How did that shape your leadership, and what would you say to women balancing several roles at once?
Building multiple businesses from a very young age while holding high-level executive roles has been the most demanding decision of my life, but also the best one.
This has taught me that you can replicate the leadership model you practice as an individual to almost any industry. If you can make one business work, there is nothing that stops you from making a completely different one thrive. In the same way, the mistakes that shape you in one venture help you execute better in the next.
Considering the advice to women wanting to grow both in their corporate careers and in building businesses, I would tell them to start as soon as possible and to strictly focus on scalable options. Let me break this down.
Acting quickly is helpful for any business. Sooner or later, entrepreneurs launch their own projects, so it's best to get through the learning curve early. By the time you have made your biggest mistakes, you are still young enough to pivot and succeed on the next attempt.
At the same time, when you have a demanding professional career, your time is your most limited asset. From that point of view, it often doesn't make sense to try building a business that pays you $1 and demands massive amounts of resources to scale it to $2, if your corporate career pays you $5. Today, after making many mistakes, I choose to dedicate my effort only to projects that can scale to $50 relatively quickly with minimal friction.
Some people's egos won't let them admit this because it means saying goodbye to businesses that cost them effort, money, tears, and above all, time. But when it comes to me, it doesn't hurt me anymore. I view it as a major investment in my education, actually. That is why today I only keep my focus on my two most scalable paths, which are my career at Bitunix and my Real Estate business.
Sure, sometimes it's hard to let something go after putting so much effort into it, but it can be necessary for growth. Finally, how have crypto narratives changed over the years, and what does it take to build a credible, lasting brand in crypto in 2026?
When it comes to narratives, it feels like every bull market brings something new that becomes trendy, but very few survive the test of time. Look back at the 2020–2022 bull market, when there were NFTs, the Metaverse, DeFi, Parachains, etc everywhere. In this recent 2024–2025 cycle, we saw TON and Solana memecoins, AI agents, RWA, and so on.
Those who are new to the industry probably won't even know what I'm talking about, but does that mean all those once-trendy cases have vanished? Not at all. Sure, some have lost serious traction, but many others have matured into something far more practical.
This recent market phase proves that. For example, newer trends such as RWA and AI agents have much more realistic applications. Someone completely outside the crypto space can understand their benefits, while my father, for example, never quite understood what the Metaverse or NFTs were supposed to achieve.
In 2020, we saw projects that were pure whitepapers packed with grand promises of the future, most of which are completely forgotten today. Later, in 2024, we shifted from the fantasy whitepaper to actual execution, and you need to attend a single crypto event to see it.
In 2021, major crypto conferences were packed with startups that only a few people could actually explain. Now, when we go to an event like Token2049 as Bitunix, we know that we are there simply to compete with the top 20 exchanges.
Of course, today, institutional investors prefer a piece of equity in a promising exchange over a mega-futuristic project with a vague future. Those over-ambitious products may feel like gambling, while the first ones suggest a real-world use case with an actual financial return. That is why, in a market as mature as today's, established exchanges are proving the most lasting and viable, rather than the startups that promised to change the world back in 2020.
