- Rob Catalanello, a 26-year Wall Road banking veteran, is the CEO of crypto buying and selling agency B2C2.
- Catalanello informed Insider how B2C2 supplies liquidity to the market by making two-way costs 24/7.
- He additionally shared why he thinks bitcoin may 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 sort of day for crypto market maker B2C2 to shine.
“It was trying fairly ugly,” Rob Catalanello, co-CEO of B2C2, informed Insider in an interview on the Chicago Trading Show. “We had our day by day assembly and I used to be like ‘guys, keep in mind your coaching, hold respiration, and we will probably be good.'”
Catalanello, a 26-year Wall Road 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 shopper positions and their very own stability sheet.
B2C2
“Not like anyone else, we even have a dwell view of our stability sheet 24 hours a day seven days every week, so we all know precisely the place all our cash is,” he mentioned, “which actually turns out to be useful on a day after 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 prospects have been calling for big orders. Actually, the agency’s world crew did a file 725 particular person settlements in a 24-hour interval, based on Catalanello.
“Exchanges are solely nearly as good because the pricing that goes into it as a result of an alternate is a spot the place consumers and sellers meet,” he mentioned. “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 quite a bit much less to maneuver bitcoin 10%, however the strikes are considerably dampened as extra
liquidity
is within the system.
Nevertheless, huge world regulatory and political actions can nonetheless shake the markets fairly a bit. For instance, he famous that liquidity, significantly in a number of the altcoins, has grow to be 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 may attain $70,000 by December 15 this yr.
The explanation, 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 legislation professor who’s important of crypto and has advocated for extra regulation of huge 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 mentioned. “Shares have bought off very aggressively however crypto has carried out tremendous.”
2 undervalued valued altcoins
B2C2 makes markets in 14 cryptocurrencies. It doesn’t go down the meals chain when it comes to altcoins as a result of only some altcoins commerce in a approach that matches the agency’s 24/7 quoting enterprise mannequin.
Earlier than his crew can think about quoting an altcoin, they need to guarantee that it may be traced through on-chain analytics, has ample shopper demand, and has a large enough 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 in all probability not going to make it. However Polkadot (DOT) and Solana (SOL) are two altcoins with “implausible” underlying know-how, he mentioned.
Created in 2016 by Ethereum co-founder Gavin Wooden, Polkadot, which has been referred to 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 principally used for governance and staking, may commerce between $45 and $50 by the top of the yr. That will 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 tasks spanning DeFi, NFTs, and Web3 in its ecosystem.
“Solana can course of over 50,000 transactions per second and has very sturdy know-how,” he mentioned. “Folks simply hold wanting to purchase it.”
