London and Menlo Park, California--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Wintermute , a digital asset algorithmic liquidity provider, today announced the completion of a US$20 million Series B financing, led by Lightspeed Venture Partners and Pantera Capital Participate. Jeremy Liew, a partner at Lightspeed Ventures, will join the Wintermute board of directors.
Other investors participating in this round of financing include Sino Global Capital, Kenetic Capital, Rockaway Blockchain Fund, and Hack VC. Fidelity Investments (Fidelity Investments) parent company FMR LLC affiliated venture capital firm Avon Ventures also participated in this round of financing. All original investors such as Blockchain.com Ventures will continue to invest in this round.
Jemery Liew said: "In just six months since we led the A round of financing, Wintermute has achieved nearly 25-fold growth, which is really rare. We are very pleased to continue to help Wintermute's future development and strategic plans. ."
Joey Krug, Co-Chief Investment Officer of Pantera Capital, said: “The scale of the cryptocurrency market continues to grow and become increasingly complex. Decentralized exchanges have also begun to allow market makers and users to be more directly connected. This requires liquidity providers to be able to synchronize with We believe that as the market size continues to grow, Wintermute’s flexible and advanced market-making strategy will be a key to unlocking liquidity and improving market efficiency."
As a cryptocurrency market maker, Wintermute focuses on improving market efficiency, liquidity, and price transparency to create a decentralized financial system. Since the establishment of the company in 2017, the team has rapidly grown into one of the largest liquidity providers in the spot market, covering nearly 50 cryptocurrency exchanges and thousands of trading pairs on CeFi, DeFi and OTC trading platforms.
In 2020, Wintermute will grow rapidly, with a monthly growth rate of 60%. As of December, the monthly transaction volume reached 30 billion US dollars. In 2020, the company will provide liquidity support for a number of well-known projects, and plans to further expand its customer base in 2021.
The team has formulated an important plan for the company's development in 2021. Wintermute is currently testing the company's own request for quotation (RFQ) platform with beta counterparties, and plans to officially launch it for institutional users in the first quarter. Wintermute CEO Evgeny Gaevoy said: "We have a very obvious price advantage in the market, so we are actually pulled into this business field by our counterparties and business partners. The algorithms we use for OTC are in line with our own The transaction algorithm is the same, which gives us an advantage in pricing. We do not charge any fees for OTC business, so counterparties can avoid intermediaries to directly trade with us, thereby reducing their costs. The RFQ platform that will be launched in the future will help us further expand The transaction size of OTC business."
At the same time, Wintermute also plans to expand its derivatives business. "Although we mainly focused on the spot market before, the team has an experienced background in high-frequency trading companies such as Optiver, and is fully equipped to provide liquidity for the derivative markets such as perpetual contracts, futures and options," Gaevoy said.
Although most of Wintermute's team members are currently based in London, the company's business network covers Asia, the United States and Europe. The company believes that the launch of the RFQ platform and derivatives business will force the company to further expand its business scale in Asia. Wintermute plans to set up its first international office in Singapore in the first quarter of 2021.
Before this round of financing, Wintermute completed the A round of financing in June 2020, led by Lightspeed Ventures; in January 2020, completed the institutional seed round of financing, led by Blockchain.com Ventures . For more information about Wintermute, please visit: www.wintermute.com
About Wintermute
Wintermute is a global digital asset algorithm liquidity provider, committed to creating a liquid, efficient and transparent market environment for institutional investors and retail investors on the audited trading platform and the company's own inquiry (RFQ) platform. Wintermute is founded and operated by a number of traders and engineers with traditional financial market background and industry experience, and applies the best practice strategies of algorithms and high-frequency trading to the digital asset market. www.wintermute.com
About Lightspeed Venture Capital
Lightspeed Venture Capital is a multi-stage venture capital company dedicated to accelerating disruptive innovation and trend advancement in the fields of enterprise, consumer, and healthcare. In the past two decades, the Lightspeed Venture Capital team has provided support to hundreds of entrepreneurs and helped found more than 400 companies worldwide, including Snap, Affirm, Nutanix, AppDynamics, MuleSoft, OYO, Guardant, StitchFix, and GrubHub And other well-known enterprises. At present, Lightspeed Venture Capital and its affiliates manage US$10.5 billion through its global platform. The team is composed of investment experts and consultants from Silicon Valley, Israel, India, China, Southeast Asia, and Europe.