Crypto Gloss

Camila Russo

Camila Russo is an Argentine journalist and author who, after reporting on global economics and cryptocurrency for Bloomberg, founded The Defiant in 2019 — a subscription newsletter and media outlet that became the leading English-language publication covering decentralized finance — and authored “The Infinite Machine: How an Army of Crypto-hackers Is Building the Next Internet with Ethereum” (HarperCollins, 2020), the first deeply researched book telling the story of Ethereum’s creation from Vitalik Buterin’s original white paper through the 2016 DAO hack, drawn from direct access to Ethereum’s core founding team.

Background

Camila Russo was born and raised in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Her direct experience of Argentina’s repeated currency crises — peso devaluations, dollar restrictions, and banking system failures — gave her both personal context for why decentralized financial systems matter and a distinctive emerging-market perspective that informs much of her reporting.

She studied journalism and international relations. She worked as a financial journalist at Bloomberg for several years, covering emerging markets, global economics, and eventually cryptocurrency as it became a significant beat.

Bloomberg Career

At Bloomberg, Russo covered cryptocurrency beginning around 2016-2017, during the first major wave of mainstream financial media attention to Bitcoin and Ethereum. She reported from global conferences and conducted direct interviews with the founders and core developers of major crypto projects during their early development years — access that later proved invaluable for the Ethereum history book.

“The Infinite Machine” (2020)

Published in July 2020 by HarperCollins, “The Infinite Machine: How an Army of Crypto-hackers Is Building the Next Internet with Ethereum” is the most comprehensive journalistic account of Ethereum’s founding history. Key dimensions of the book:

  • Vitalik Buterin’s origin story — From Russian-Canadian teenager obsessed with World of Warcraft (and upset when Blizzard nerfed his warlock) to writing the Bitcoin Magazine articles and the Ethereum white paper in late 2013.
  • The co-founders — Detailed accounts of the early Ethereum team: Gavin Wood, Charles Hoskinson, Mihai Alisie, Anthony Di Iorio, Joseph Lubin, Amir Chetrit, Jeffrey Wilcke.
  • The ICO and Ethereum Foundation — The 2014 ICO that raised ~$18M in Bitcoin, the internal organizational conflicts, and the formation of the Swiss-based Ethereum Foundation.
  • The DAO hack — The June 2016 $60M DAO hack and the contentious hard fork decision that split Ethereum from Ethereum Classic.

The book is drawn from Russo’s direct interviews with Buterin, Hoskinson, Lubin, Wood, and many others, conducted while she was at Bloomberg and during subsequent research.

The Defiant

Russo founded The Defiant in 2019 as a Substack newsletter covering decentralized finance. As DeFi exploded in 2020 (the “DeFi Summer”), The Defiant became one of the primary English-language destination for:

  • Protocol analysis (MakerDAO, Compound, Uniswap, Aave, Curve, Yearn Finance, etc.)
  • DeFi risk coverage (smart contract exploits, stablecoin collapses)
  • Regulatory developments affecting DeFi
  • Video interviews with DeFi protocol founders
  • Weekly market performance coverage

The Defiant expanded beyond newsletter to include a YouTube channel, podcast, and news website. It operates on a freemium model with premium subscriber access to in-depth analysis.

Key Dates

  • 2016–2019 — Covers cryptocurrency for Bloomberg; conducts interviews that form the basis of “The Infinite Machine.”
  • 2019 — Founds The Defiant newsletter.
  • July 2020 — “The Infinite Machine” published by HarperCollins.
  • 2020 — “DeFi Summer” — The Defiant grows rapidly as DeFi protocols boom.
  • 2021 — The Defiant expands to video, podcast, and website formats.
  • 2022–2024 — Continues covering DeFi through bear market and recovery.

Common Misconceptions

  • “Camila Russo is primarily a cryptocurrency trader or investor.” — She is primarily a journalist and author. While she has investments in cryptocurrency as disclosed in her writing, her professional identity and contribution is as a media figure and researcher, not a trader or fund manager.
  • “The Infinite Machine is an official Ethereum Foundation history.” — It is independent journalism. Russo’s access was through direct interviews rather than an official commission. The Ethereum Foundation did not review or approve the book’s content. It represents Russo’s independent journalistic work.

Last updated: 2026-04

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