Episode 41 of Season 3 of The Scoop was recorded remotely with The Block’s Frank Chaparro and Rich Rosenblum, Co-founder and CEO of GSR Markets.
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GSR’s Rich Rosenblum doesn’t seem to mind the volatility.
On this week’s episode of The Scoop, GSR Markets co-founder and President Rich Rosenblum, joined The Scoop host Frank Chaparro for a discussion on the state of the bitcoin market.
The price of the cryptocurrency has been gyrating over the course of the last several weeks, even dropping below $30,000 on Tuesday. That bearish price activity, however, is happening against a backdrop of crypto firms raising hundreds of millions in equity financing.
Rosenblum cut his teeth as an oil trader at Goldman Sachs before launching the crypto trading firm and market maker GSR in 2013. Today, GSR trades billions of dollars worth of crypto. He said what we are seeing is not a bear market.
“I’d say we’re in more of a stasis. I think that the market is getting more iterated, more complex than ‘do I buy it and hold it for this rampant bear market or do I get short?’ I think we’re a bit in between here.”
Indeed, the private market in crypto startups is heating up, with FTX announcing its own $900 million Series B raise this week. In total, data from The Block Research shows companies have raised $6.2 billion this year. Rosenblum added:
“So I do think that the drop in the market really isn’t evident for what I think is going to happen in the future of prices. If you look at private market valuations, many of these valuations are up 50 percent or doubled in the past two or three months. So, certainly the private equity companies that are coming to the space and looking there, they’ve got more firepower than the VC’s and they’re not afraid to spend. So there’s a lot of building, but the price of a token dropping by 50 percent in two or three months, I think it’s pushed away not only in retail, but some of the institutional investors. So the token landscape is a little bit quieter. But as say, it’s down but not out.”
We also discuss:
- The growth of GSR’s team and business operations
- Why market makers matter in DeFi
- How GSR could make markets in the NFT space
- Where Rich is seeing bigger opportunities in crypto trading today
- China’s mining ban
© 2021 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.
