– UK, London – Wintermute, an algorithmic liquidity provider for digital assets, today announced the close of a $20M Series B funding round led by Lightspeed Venture Partners with participation from Pantera Capital. 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.
Concurrent with the financing, Jeremy Liew, Partner at Lightspeed, will join the Board of Directors.
“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,” commented Jeremy Liew, Partner at Lightspeed.
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.
“As crypto markets grow in size and complexity, and as decentralized exchanges begin to more directly connect market makers and users, space will require liquidity providers that can evolve in tandem and keep markets efficient,” said 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.
“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,” said CEO, Evgeny Gaevoy. “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.”
“We have historically focused on the 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,” added Evgeny Gaevoy.
About Wintermute
Wintermute is a global algorithmic liquidity provider for digital assets. Wintermute’s mission is to create a 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.
While most of the team is based in London, Wintermute has always operated globally across venues in Asia, the 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.
For more information: https://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.
For more information: https://lsvp.com/
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