- Rob Catalanello, a 26-year Wall Avenue banking veteran, is the CEO of crypto buying and selling agency B2C2.
- Catalanello advised Insider how B2C2 offers liquidity to the market by making two-way costs 24/7.
- He additionally shared why he thinks bitcoin might attain $70k by Dec. 15, and two undervalued altcoins.
On Could 19, bitcoin took merchants on a wild experience with a same-day 30% plunge and surge, inflicting outages on main crypto exchanges. That was the form of day for crypto market maker B2C2 to shine.
“It was trying fairly ugly,” Rob Catalanello, co-CEO of B2C2, advised Insider in an interview on the Chicago Trading Show. “We had our every day assembly and I used to be like ‘guys, keep in mind your coaching, maintain respiration, and we shall be good.'”
Catalanello, a 26-year Wall Avenue veteran who had labored at Credit score Agricole, Merrill Lynch, and Goldman Sachs, was unperturbed as a result of his crew was on high of all of their consumer positions and their very own steadiness sheet.
B2C2
“Not like anyone else, we even have a reside view of our steadiness sheet 24 hours a day seven days every week, so we all know precisely the place all our cash is,” he stated, “which actually is useful on a day once we settle over $1.5 billion.”
Amid bitcoin’s excessive worth swings on Could 19, some crypto exchanges stopped settling trades for some time however B2C2 stored on pricing, settling, and risk-managing trades even when clients have been calling for big orders. In actual fact, the agency’s international crew did a document 725 particular person settlements in a 24-hour interval, in accordance with Catalanello.
“Exchanges are solely nearly as good because the pricing that goes into it as a result of an change is a spot the place patrons and sellers meet,” he stated. “What we do is we’re the knuckleheads who’re on the market selecting up pennies in entrance of steamrollers.”
Bitcoin to $70,000 by December 15
Catalanello recalled that when he first received into crypto in 2019, it took so much much less to maneuver bitcoin 10%, however the strikes are considerably dampened as extra
liquidity
is within the system.
Nevertheless, massive international regulatory and political actions can nonetheless shake the markets fairly a bit. For instance, he famous that liquidity, significantly in among the altcoins, has turn into thinner ever since China introduced it was banning bitcoin buying and selling.
Whereas B2C2 doesn’t take a directional view on bitcoin, Catalanello personally thinks bitcoin might attain $70,000 by December 15 this 12 months.
The rationale, he believes, is that the congressional gridlock over the Biden administration’s $1 trillion infrastructure invoice is weighing on shares and the financial system. The market is nervous about President Biden’s nomination of Saule Omarova, a regulation professor who’s vital of crypto and has advocated for extra regulation of massive banks, to run the Workplace of the Comptroller of the Foreign money. Moreover, inflation, as measured by the PCE worth index, lately surged to a brand new 30-year high, he added.
“All of it is a snowball impact and that is good for crypto,” he stated. “Shares have offered off very aggressively however crypto has carried out wonderful.”
2 undervalued valued altcoins
B2C2 makes markets in 14 cryptocurrencies. It doesn’t go down the meals chain by way of altcoins as a result of only some altcoins commerce in a manner that matches the agency’s 24/7 quoting enterprise mannequin.
Earlier than his crew can take into account quoting an altcoin, they need to ensure that it may be traced through on-chain analytics, has enough shopper demand, and has a sufficiently big float the place he can borrow these cash to fulfill quick positions that come up from shoppers’ market-making.
One other issue that makes him cautious about altcoins is just the sheer variety of them, most of that are most likely not going to make it. However Polkadot (DOT) and Solana (SOL) are two altcoins with “unbelievable” underlying know-how, he stated.
Created in 2016 by Ethereum co-founder Gavin Wooden, Polkadot, which has been known as “the web of blockchains,” is a protocol that goals to allow completely different private and non-private blockchains to attach with one another.
Catalanello thinks Polkadot’s native token, which is especially used for governance and staking, might commerce between $45 and $50 by the top of the 12 months. That may mark an as much as 61% surge from its present worth degree of about $31 as of Tuesday night.
Solana is a decentralized blockchain that achieves consensus through a hybrid of proof-of-history and proof-of-stake fashions. It is without doubt one of the quickest and lowest-cost blockchains with over 400 initiatives spanning DeFi, NFTs, and Web3 in its ecosystem.
“Solana can course of over 50,000 transactions per second and has very robust know-how,” he stated. “Folks simply maintain wanting to purchase it.”
