Grupo Caldeira OTC, a Brazilian trading desk that buys and sells crypto assets for institutional clients, has merged with Urban, a company that builds technology for digital-asset operations and international payments. Urban announced the merger on October 19, 2026.
Financial terms were not disclosed. The combined company uses the Urban name, is headquartered in São Paulo and keeps an operational base in Rio de Janeiro.
Caldeira co-founder Yago Carvalho becomes chief executive of the merged company. Clients of both firms are being moved onto Urban's systems, which the companies say is happening without interruptions to service, according to Dealroom.
What the two companies do
Caldeira OTC was founded in 2019 in Niterói, in Rio de Janeiro state, according to Startups Latam, by Caroline Caldeira and Yago Carvalho. It specialises in liquidity, market making, arbitrage and high-volume execution of crypto trades for institutional clients.
Urban was founded by Cristian Tolosa, Israel Lujan and Rafael Steinfeld. It built its own technology for digital-asset operations and global payments, covering process automation, API integration, institutional execution and traceability.
The combined company has three business lines: providing liquidity to institutions, cross-border payments and transfers using virtual assets, and what it calls crypto as a service, infrastructure that partners use to build their own products. Its clients are fintechs, financial institutions and corporate treasuries, and its international payments connect Brazil with the United States, Europe and Asia. The business is mainly sold to other companies.
An over-the-counter, or OTC, desk arranges large crypto trades directly between parties instead of on a public exchange, which matters for institutions moving amounts too large to trade on an order book without moving the price. Caldeira's market making and arbitrage work fits that role, while Urban's software handles the payments and record-keeping around each transaction.
Who runs the merged company
Carvalho is chief executive, Cristian Tolosa is chief financial officer, Caroline Caldeira is chief operating officer, Rafael Steinfeld is chief legal officer and Israel Lujan is director of operational treasury, according to Startupi. One outlet, Startups Latam, gave the finance chief's name as Cristian Luján, so the spelling differs between reports.
Caldeira brings its trading desk, crypto liquidity and sales team. Urban brings the automation, integration and traceability technology. The companies say the combined business serves about 500 institutional clients and moved more than R$21 billion in 2026. Startups Latam put that at more than $4.17 billion and Dealroom at more than $5.37 billion; the two conversions do not match.
Neither company disclosed outside investors. Advisory firm UP TO Capital conceived the merger and acted as strategic adviser, and law firm Demarest Advogados gave legal advice, BitNotícias reported.
The firms describe the business as mainly business-to-business, with some business-to-business-to-consumer activity through partners that offer Urban's infrastructure to their own customers.
Why now
The timing is set by regulation. The Central Bank of Brazil's Resolutions 519, 520 and 521 created rules for virtual-asset service providers, and companies operating under the transition regime have until 30 October 2026 to file their first request for authorisation, according to Startupi.
Urban is preparing an application to operate as a virtual-asset service provider (SPSAV), and BitNotícias reported that it had not yet been filed at the time of the announcement. Startupi reported that the merger coincides with the new resolutions.
Dealroom noted that Brazil's framework, formalised in February 2026, also limits the use of crypto or stablecoins to settle payments between local foreign exchange providers and overseas counterparties, a rule that affects the cross-border business both firms run.
Neither company has published a timetable for a decision by the central bank. Until authorisation is granted, the merged firm continues to operate under the transition regime set out in the resolutions.
