Atani CEO Paul Barroso: The Future of Non-Custodial Crypto Trading

My background is in software engineering. After completing my Computer Science degree, I developed my career in London, where I worked for Morgan Stanley.

I've always had a keen interest in trading financial markets, and back in 2013, I started investing in Bitcoin. What began as a hobby soon evolved into a full-time career. I eventually decided to go all-in, founding a proprietary crypto trading desk.

As a trader, I personally felt the pain points associated with managing crypto—trading across fragmented exchanges, using disparate crypto-related services, and dealing with tax reporting. The absence of a superior alternative motivated my co-founder and business partner (who is also my wife) and me to build our own solution. That solution is **Atani**, the all-in-one terminal for crypto traders. As the company's CEO, we are working diligently to make crypto trading accessible and affordable.

From a regulatory standpoint, we provide software tools for crypto traders and investors but do NOT engage in any regulated financial activities ourselves (e.g., custody, deposit-taking, lending, payments, providing liquidity, etc.). Therefore, our location (Spain, European Union) is not a critical factor.

We are incredibly proud of everything we've accomplished at Atani so far. First and foremost, we have assembled an A-team composed of world-class crypto, finance, and technology professionals. Together, we have taken an ambitious vision and transformed it into an exceptional product that traders from over 100 countries love.

Additionally, we have developed proprietary technology. For example, the **crypto trading terminal** is non-custodial and powered by a data pipeline that processes over 1 billion daily events in real-time. Our technology stack allows us to rapidly innovate, ship new features, and support all new markets.

Lastly, we are humbled by the caliber of the top-tier firms and renowned investors who have been attracted to the project and are backing Atani.

First and foremost, Atani is a "one-stop-shop." We have integrated more than 20 of the world's leading crypto exchanges and every tool a trader needs into a single terminal. Today, anyone can manage all their trading, portfolio tracking, charting, alerts, tax reporting, and more from one unified application.

Second, most trading platforms are cloud-based. In contrast, Atani is a non-custodial desktop app, making it the most secure trading terminal available. Your API keys never leave your computer.

Finally, all products and services in our current product suite are completely free. We do not charge any trading fees or recurring subscriptions.

Currently, we don't generate revenue. We will be introducing more advanced features (e.g., APIs for developers) and will implement a freemium model in the future. However, we will continue to work hard to provide as much value as possible for as little cost as possible.

Our ambition is to become a globally relevant technology player. We have the core belief that, in the long run, doing the right thing for the user (building a terminal that provides immense value for free to millions) is the right thing for the business. We are backed by some of Europe's top VC firms and business angels, and our investors are fully aligned with this long-term vision.

Our north star is the needs and wants of crypto traders, and we have a very aggressive roadmap to meet their expectations. Among other things, we will launch a mobile app, add more spot exchanges, and expand tax reporting to more countries. We also plan to add support for futures trading, margin trading, decentralized exchanges (DEXs), and non-exchange wallets.

The greatest challenge is that doing the right thing is almost never the easiest thing. For example, if we had built Atani as a web-based terminal, it would have taken significantly less effort. But that would mean storing users' API keys on a centralized server, creating a massive security risk.

So, we took the harder path and chose to build a desktop **non-custodial exchange** terminal. API keys are stored locally on each user's machine and secured with military-grade encryption. This means our servers never have access to users' API keys or assets. So, in the unlikely event Atani is hacked, attackers would not be able to steal any funds.

Another example is real-time data. Most terminals provide snapshots of the orderbook. Having access to true real-time market data and tick-by-tick orderbooks is critical for traders, so we invested heavily in building a pipeline that can process enormous amounts of market data in real-time.

I'm particularly excited by many developments in the DeFi space, which will continue to grow in value and utility. For instance, cross-chain swaps that enable blockchain-agnostic value transfers and will improve the overall interoperability of the crypto ecosystem.

Also, all the work being done on scaling programmable blockchains, both by Ethereum and by its alternatives like Polkadot and Solana, is very promising.

Another key area is NFTs, which are still in their nascent stages but will bring fundamental value to the ecosystem once people figure out how to create the right incentive structures for digital collectibles.

I am certain that the ecosystem will continue to mature, grow in utility, and attract smart capital and top talent. Institutional investors will keep increasing their exposure to crypto, playing a crucial role in facilitating access for mainstream retail investors.

We are also seeing significant interest from venture capital and now major corporations, like PayPal, with long-term strategies and ambitious plans to develop crypto-related capabilities. This, along with the direct listing of Coinbase, will lead to a very active market for mergers and acquisitions in the crypto space.

In our view, the lack of usability is the primary bottleneck for crypto. Today, you either enter a walled garden like Coinbase, which is limited in functionality and has excessive costs for end-users, or you have to juggle numerous disconnected solutions.

Atani exists to solve this. We embrace a user-centric approach and are focused on delivering accessible, end-to-end solutions for crypto traders and investors.

As I mentioned, I believe NFTs will bring fundamental value to the ecosystem and power real use cases across many industries. But we are still very early, in a phase of discovery and experimentation. This means that around 90% of what's happening right now will likely fail, and only a few projects will remain in a few years.

Right now, the market is too speculative and looks very much like the ICO craze of 2017. However, there is one key difference. When markets for a fungible asset crash, you can generally take a loss and exit that position. With non-fungible tokens, given their uniqueness and lack of liquidity, by the time markets crash, it will be extremely difficult to exit those positions, even at a loss.