 Ex-Pimco, Millennium execs set up crypto advisory business 
2024-11-11

Two former executives at major American investment management firms, Millennium Management and Pacific Investment Management Co (Pimco), are reentering the cryptocurrency space amid a major market rally.
Millennium’s ex-portfolio manager Benoit Bosc and Pimco’s former executive vice president Michael Bressler left their posts to set up a new crypto consultancy firm, x2B, Bloomberg reported on Nov. 11.
Expected to launch in November 2024, x2B will advise crypto projects on sectors like fundraising, tokenomics and market-maker strategy, exchange listing and treasury management.
X2B co-founders left GSR following a bear market in crypto 2022
Before their roles at Millennium and Pimco, both Bosc and Bressler spent a couple of years in senior roles at the crypto liquidity firm GSR, with Bosc joining in 2022 and Bressler in 2021. Both left GSR in 2023 following a major decline in crypto markets in 2022.
Bressler, who previously worked for almost 14 years at the Wall Street giant JPMorgan, believes that “very few people” at the intersection of high-level traditional finance and digital finance understand the “intricate dynamics of token launches.”
He said that x2B already has 10 clients and will charge fees in a mixture of a project’s future tokens and cash.
Bosc, who served as a crude oil trader at Goldman Sachs for more than nine years, said that the crypto industry would benefit from a “more professional and transparent approach.”
According to Bosc, x2B plans to target “more accountability” from the various market actors and service providers participating in token launches.
The crypto consultancy launches amid Bitcoin hitting $80,000
Bosc and Bressler’s comeback into crypto comes amid a massive rally in the cryptocurrency market, with Bitcoin BTCUSD surging past $80,000 for the first time in history on Nov. 10.
The bullish crypto sentiment in 2024 has expanded further amid Donald Trump’s victory in the United States presidential elections, as many in the industry believe that Trump’s administration would positively impact the growing industry in the US and globally.
At the time of writing, Bitcoin is trading at $81,331, up around 3% over the past 24 hours. The cryptocurrency has surged around 85% year-to-date, with 30% gains over the past 30 days, according to CoinGecko.