Former Goldman Sachs Group Inc. managing director Javier Rodriguez-Alarcon is joining XBTO, the crypto investment firm that’s the jersey sponsor for football superstar Lionel Messi’s new team Inter Miami.
(Bloomberg) — Former Goldman Sachs Group Inc. managing director Javier Rodriguez-Alarcon is joining XBTO, the crypto investment firm that’s the jersey sponsor for football superstar Lionel Messi’s new team Inter Miami.
As chief commercial officer, Rodriguez-Alarcon’s role will include overseeing XBTO’s expansion into new products and asset management strategies, the company said on Thursday. He starts at XBTO at the end of the month.
Rodriguez-Alarcon, who left Goldman during the summer after more than a decade at the Wall Street firm, was most recently London-based global head of client portfolio management for public equities at its asset management unit. He also led the division’s quantitative investment group for Europe, the Middle East and Africa.
Founded in 2015 by former SAC Capital analyst Philippe Bekhazi, XBTO started out as a proprietary crypto trading outfit. The company started expanding into areas like asset management this year and in August it bought Stablehouse, a firm that offers custody and other services for digital assets.
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XBTO is broadening its scope at a time when cryptocurrency trading volumes remain depressed, hurting profits at market makers and other trading firms. At the same time, some large financial institutions have pushed deeper into the digital-asset space. Franklin Templeton this week applied to offer a US exchange-traded fund that invests directly in Bitcoin, joining rivals Fidelity and BlackRock.
“There is a significant opportunity to deliver institutional-grade quality products and technology in the digital assets space,” Rodriguez-Alarcon said in an interview.
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