Wintermute, an algorithmic liquidity provider for digital assets, today announced the close of a $20M Series B round led by Lightspeed Venture Partners (“Lightspeed”) with participation from Pantera Capital. Jeremy Liew, Partner at Lightspeed, will join Wintermute’s Board of Directors.
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Other investors joining the round include Sino Global Capital, Kenetic Capital, Rockaway Blockchain Fund, Hack VC, DeFi Alliance, and Avon Ventures, a venture capital fund affiliated with FMR LLC, the parent company of Fidelity Investments. All existing investors, including Blockchain.com Ventures, also participated.
Wintermute is a crypto-native market maker, focused on building a decentralized financial system by creating efficient, liquid markets with transparent prices. Since the company’s launch in 2017, the team has become one of the largest liquidity providers in crypto markets, covering thousands of pairs across almost 50 crypto exchanges and trading platforms on CeFi, DeFi and OTC.
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The company has seen tremendous growth in 2020 growing at a 60% monthly rate and reaching $30B monthly trading volume by December. Wintermute also provided liquidity for some of the most prominent projects in 2020 and is planning to support many more in 2021.
The team has big growth plans for 2021. Wintermute is currently piloting its own RFQ platform with beta counterparties and is planning to launch it for institutional players within the first quarter. “Since we have some of the most competitive pricing in the market, we were literally pulled into this business by our counterparties and partners that we work with. The algorithms we use for OTC are the same we use for our proprietary trading, so we have an advantage when it comes to pricing,” says Evgeny Gaevoy, CEO of Wintermute. “We take no fees on our OTC activities so counterparties can eliminate intermediaries and cut fees by trading with us directly. With the launch of RFQ we’ll be able to offer OTC trades at a greater scale.”
