Crypto liquidity firm Wintermute raises $20m in Series B round
Digital assets firm, Wintermute, has raised $20 million in a Series B funding round led by Lightspeed Venture Partners.
Wintermute has raised $23.7 million so far
Other investors in the Series B include Pantera Capital, Sino Global Capital, Kenetic Capital, Rockaway Blockchain Fund, and more.
The round sees Lightspeed partner, Jeremy Liew, join Wintermute’s board.
“Wintermute has grown almost 25x since Lightspeed led the company’s Series A round just six months ago,” says Liew.
“We are excited to continue supporting Wintermute and their ambitious expansion plans going forward.”
Wintermute calls itself a “crypto-native market maker”. It builds decentralised systems for the provision of liquidity in cryptocurrency.
It claims to cover 50 crypto exchanges and trading platforms, and have $30 billion in monthly trading volume.
Wintermute is currently piloting its own request for quotation (RFQ) platform with beta counterparties. It plans to launch the new system for institutional players in Q1 2021.
“We were literally pulled into this business by our counterparties and partners that we work with,” says Wintermute CEO, Evgeny Gaevoy.
“We take no fees on our OTC activities so counterparties can eliminate intermediaries and cut fees by trading with us directly.”
The firm is looking to use its latest funding to scale its derivatives business. Gaevoy says his company has “historically focused” on spot trading, but has “all the expertise” to provide perpetuals, futures, and options.
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