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.
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 has grown almost 25x since Lightspeed led the company’s Series A round just six months ago. That rarely happens! We are excited to continue supporting Wintermute and their ambitious expansion plans going forward,” says Jeremy Liew, Partner at Lightspeed.
“As crypto markets grow in size and complexity, and as decentralized exchanges begin to more directly connect market makers and users, the space will require liquidity providers that can evolve in tandem and keep markets efficient,” says Joey Krug, Co-CIO of Pantera Capital. “We believe that Wintermute’s agile and sophisticated approach to market making will be key to unlocking liquid and efficient markets for this growing financial system.”
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.
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.”
Wintermute is also looking to scale the derivatives business. “We have historically focused on spot, but coming from traditional HFTs like Optiver, we have all the expertise in house to provide liquidity in derivatives markets across perpetuals, futures and options,” says Gaevoy.
While most of the team is based in London, Wintermute has always operated globally across venues in Asia, US and Europe. The firm believes that with the launch of its RFQ and derivatives businesses, it will also expand its physical presence into Asia. Wintermute plans to open its first international office in Singapore in the first quarter of 2021.
This latest round of funding comes on the heels of the Series A round the company closed in June 2020, led by Lightspeed Venture Partners and the institutional seed funding round led by Blockchain.com Ventures in January 2020. For more information on Wintermute, visit: www.wintermute.com.
About Wintermute
Wintermute is a global algorithmic liquidity provider for digital assets. Wintermute’s mission is to create liquid, efficient and transparent markets for institutional and retail investors across all vetted trading platforms and its own RFQ platform. Founded and managed by experienced traders and engineers from traditional financial markets, Wintermute brings the best practices of algorithmic and high-frequency trading into digital asset markets. www.wintermute.com
About Lightspeed Venture Partners
Lightspeed Venture Partners is a multi-stage venture capital firm focused on accelerating disruptive innovations and trends in the Enterprise, Consumer, and Health sectors. Over the past two decades, the Lightspeed team has backed hundreds of entrepreneurs and helped build more than 400 companies globally, including Snap, Affirm, Nutanix, AppDynamics, MuleSoft, OYO, Guardant, StitchFix, and GrubHub. Lightspeed and its affiliates currently manage $10.5B across the global Lightspeed platform, with investment professionals and advisors in Silicon Valley, Israel, India, China, Southeast Asia and Europe. www.lsvp.com
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