Interview with Bobby Zagotta, Chief Business Officer at Rialo

Finance veteran with stints at CME and Kraken

"Aiming to build a blockchain for institutions"

Discussing PoCs with South Korean financial firms

"We won't rush a token launch"

"It is very encouraging to see traditional finance institutions beginning to take blockchain technology seriously. We need to build a blockchain institutions can actually use and not miss this moment."

Bobby Zagotta, chief business officer at Rialo, made the remarks in an Oct. 6 interview with Bloomingbit. He said existing blockchains remain too complex for institutions to use in their day-to-day operations.

Rialo is a blockchain launched in August 2025 by Subzero Labs, a company founded by engineers from Sui. When it unveiled Rialo, Subzero Labs also raised $20 million in funding led by crypto venture capital firm Pantera Capital. HashKey, Coinbase Ventures, Mysten Labs and Variant also took part.

Zagotta is a finance executive with experience in both traditional finance and crypto. He began his career at CME Group, the world's largest derivatives exchange operator.

While overseeing products and services at CME, he first encountered Bitcoin and blockchain in 2013 through CME Ventures, the company's in-house venture investment arm. Though initially skeptical of crypto, he said he became convinced of blockchain's potential after closely reading the Bitcoin white paper.

Zagotta later served as chief commercial officer at US crypto exchange Kraken and as chief commercial officer at Bitstamp, which is owned by Robinhood. He said Rialo has the potential to grow into a blockchain tailored for institutions. After serving as an adviser to Subzero Labs, he formally joined 10 months ago because he saw strong potential in the project.

Making blockchain as easy as Web2, with infrastructure for institutions

Most blockchains are still too complicated for institutions to use, Zagotta said. Blockchain should become as easy to use as a Web2 service. Rialo's goal, he said, is to build a blockchain that institutions can adopt through familiar workflows rather than forcing them to understand and adapt to blockchain mechanics.

Rialo was designed to natively support application programming interfaces, or APIs, that connect directly with external systems, interoperability across blockchains and selective privacy functions. That differentiates it from existing blockchains, which often depend on separate external infrastructure for those features.

More specifically, Rialo offers services including Rialo Edge, which brings external data onto the blockchain through APIs, and IPC, an identity verification and privacy tool. Zagotta said a financial institution could use Rialo to determine whether a customer qualifies for a loan without exposing credit data stored in external systems on-chain. If needed, it could also check sanctions status, jurisdiction and even assets held off-chain when evaluating the loan.

Targeting RWA and AI agents

Zagotta said Rialo could stand out particularly in real-world assets, or RWA, and AI agents. The core of financial services built around RWA, he said, is bringing fragmented data together.

He cited the RWA-based lending market as a representative use case. If a user holds tokenized stocks on Robinhood and Ether on the Ethereum network, both assets could be used as collateral on Rialo, he said. Through APIs, lenders could also review a borrower's credit record and off-chain assets.

In AI agents, Rialo could be used for credit guarantees, according to Zagotta. To support that, Subzero Labs developed Latch, a security and control system tailored for AI agents. The system allows users to manage in detail what an AI agent is authorized to do when transacting on a person's behalf.

With Latch, users can preset who an AI agent can transact with and how much it can spend, he said. Permissions can also be configured to expire after a certain period.

"South Korean financial firms show strong willingness to move on-chain"

Zagotta also said Rialo will not rush to launch a token. Unlike many blockchains that issue a token first and build the ecosystem later, Rialo plans to secure real-world use cases and business results before moving ahead.

He said the company has a concrete view of the role a native Rialo token would play. But once a token is launched, metrics such as price can become the standard by which the blockchain is judged. For now, the company is focused on building a business model that works in practice.

Rialo is building real-world use cases with Cboe, including market data integration. Zagotta said the company is also partnering with multiple institutions beyond Cboe and has spent months developing applications. It plans to disclose its token launch roadmap after confirming the growth potential of its business model.

South Korean institutions are also potential clients. Zagotta said South Korean financial firms have shown strong willingness to expand on-chain. Rialo is discussing proof-of-concept projects with several South Korean institutions. The goal, he said, is to build Rialo's presence and reputation so that when conditions allow Korean institutions to expand seriously into crypto businesses, they will choose Rialo as their blockchain partner.