Two former executives of the leading investor in the world’s financial markets, Citadel Securities, Leonard Lancia and Alex Casimo have raised $50 million for their own crypto market maker. The company also plans to invest in crypto assets via web 3 projects.
Ex-leaders at Citadel Security initially launched their own market maker in April 2021 and named it Portofino Technology. The platform aims to enable high-frequency trading (HFT) and provide advanced features to the digital asset users of web 3 and other institutions. It provides liquidity services to crypto users of web 3 and relies on highly-efficient and fast algorithms to open and close a trade seamlessly.
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Moreover, it offers strategic partnerships to web 3 startups looking to list their tokens. The company already claims to have traded billions of funds on centralized and decentralized exchanges.
Venture capitalists who backed the funding round include Global Founders Capital, Valar Ventures, and Coatue.
Lancia, the co-founder and CEO at Portfolio Technology, added in the statement;
Having worked at the forefront of the modernization of traditional markets, we believe that our liquidity provisioning infrastructure can deliver enormous benefits to digital asset participants globally and drive the next leg of adoption. This is only the start for Portofino. In web3, every action is a transaction, and we’re building the underlying technology that is going to enable entirely new services and industries in the future.
After enabling investors to access liquidity at very competitive prices, the company intends to expand its reach in the entire crypto space, including non-fungible tokens (NFTs), Decentralized Finance (DeFi), ecosystem tokens based on gaming, etc.
Crypto Market Maker Plans To Expand Globally
The Switzerland-based startup company Portfino Technology detailed in the press release that the platform employs 35 technology experts working in Portfonio’s offices across New York, London, and Singapore, and it plans to further increase its staff headcount by 50 in 2022. The company has not expressed its valuation yet.
The funds for Portofino are accumulated amidst the long-lasted bloodbaths and inflation that wiped billions of dollars from the crypto market. It further drove more selling pressure, and the lawmakers added fuel to the fire with their aggressive approach to digital assets.
Similarly, this climate led the market toward lower trading volumes and fewer arbitrage opportunities. And it also increased the borrowing costs. But, Portofino Technology could compete with big market makers on leverage with the help of its automotive inventory management and unique algorithms.
Oliver Samwer, an investor at Global Founders Capital and CEO at Rocket Internet, commented on the launch of Portofino Technology and added;
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We’re really excited about the potential of Portofino. It’s rare that you find a founding team with such fantastic expertise to solve the problems that digital asset market participants face today. We are convinced this is the right team to help facilitate the next leg of institutional and retail participation in this market.
Featured image from Pixabay and chart from TradingView.com