Former Citadel Executives Launch $50M Web3 Fund – NFTgators

Quick take:

• Former Citadel executives have launched a $50 million web3 fund.
• The two leaders founded Portofino Technologies a leading market maker in traditional finance.
• According to the announcement, the company has already traded billions of dollars in centralised and decentralised exchanges.

Former leaders at Citadel Securities have launched a $50 million web3 fund to invest in digital assets. The fundraising is backed by leading web3 venture capital firms including Valar Ventures, Global Founders Capital and Coatue.

The two executives Leonard Lancia and Alex Casimo announced the launch of Portofino Technologies. This market-making traditional finance company has traded billions of dollars across centralised and decentralised exchanges.

The company is building high-frequency trading (HFT) grade technology for digital assets. Also known as quant trading, HFT is a trading strategy that leverages sophisticated algorithms and powerful servers to identify, open and close trades at high speed. 

Firms that use this strategy target multiple marginal profits from trades opened and closed within a short period of time, rather than holding positions for an extended period to net huge profits.

The company seeks to extend its liquidity services to web3 companies after serving both centralised and decentralised cryptocurrency exchanges over the past year.

Portofino uses advanced machine learning and stochastic control techniques to provide liquidity at the most competitive prices to investors. The company now wants to scale its technology across the entire crypto infrastructure value chain, which covers multiple segments, including decentralised finance (DeFi), non-fungible tokens (NFTs), ecosystem tokens (e.g. gaming and marketplace governance tokens) and more.

Commenting on the investment announcement Leonard Lancia, CEO and Founder at Portofino said: “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.”

On the other hand, Oliver Samwer, Founder, Global Founders Capital commented: “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.”

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