- Rob Catalanello, a 26-year Wall Avenue banking veteran, is the CEO of crypto buying and selling agency B2C2.
- Catalanello advised Insider how B2C2 gives 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 Might 19, bitcoin took merchants on a wild journey 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, 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, preserve respiratory, 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 group was on high of all of their shopper positions and their very own stability sheet.
B2C2
“In contrast to anyone else, we even have a reside 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 is useful on a day once we settle over $1.5 billion.”
Amid bitcoin’s excessive worth swings on Might 19, some crypto exchanges stopped settling trades for some time however B2C2 saved on pricing, settling, and risk-managing trades even when clients have been calling for big orders. In reality, the agency’s world group did a file 725 particular person settlements in a 24-hour interval, in keeping with Catalanello.
“Exchanges are solely pretty much as good because the pricing that goes into it as a result of an change is a spot the place consumers and sellers meet,” he mentioned. “What we do is we’re the knuckleheads who’re on the market choosing up pennies in entrance of steamrollers.”
Bitcoin to $70,000 by December 15
Catalanello recalled that when he first acquired into crypto in 2019, it took loads much less to maneuver bitcoin 10%, however the strikes are considerably dampened as extra
liquidity
is within the system.
Nevertheless, massive world regulatory and political actions can nonetheless shake the markets fairly a bit. For instance, he famous that liquidity, notably in a number of the altcoins, has develop 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 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 regulation professor who’s essential of crypto and has advocated for extra regulation of massive banks, to run the Workplace of the Comptroller of the Forex. 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 offered off very aggressively however crypto has executed high-quality.”
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 just a few altcoins commerce in a means that matches the agency’s 24/7 quoting enterprise mannequin.
Earlier than his group can contemplate quoting an altcoin, they have to guarantee that it may be traced by way of on-chain analytics, has ample client 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 “implausible” underlying know-how, he mentioned.
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 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 by way of a hybrid of proof-of-history and proof-of-stake fashions. It is among 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 robust know-how,” he mentioned. “Folks simply preserve wanting to purchase it.”
