Wintermute USA registered with the US securities regulator SEC as a broker-dealer in early August and joined FINRA. With the license, CEO Evgeny Gaevoy now wants to catch up with Citadel Securities and Jane Street within three to five years.
Wintermute ranks among the largest market makers in the crypto market. The company quotes continuous bid and ask prices for digital assets on more than 60 centralized and decentralized venues. Average daily volume runs above USD 10 billion. Broker-dealer status additionally allows securities trading for its own account and settlement in house. The firm entered the US market in May 2025 with its own headquarters in New York. Without a license, however, the trading house stayed shut out of crypto ETF settlement. BlackRock's iShares Bitcoin Trust alone held USD 43.2 billion at the end of June 2026. Roughly a dozen authorized participants serve that fund. None of them is crypto-native.
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What the broker-dealer license unlocks for Wintermute
Registration with the securities regulator and FINRA membership open three business lines for the US unit at once. FINRA supervises US broker-dealers as a self-regulatory organization. Wintermute USA may now trade traditional stocks and stock options for its own account. Moreover, the unit can act as an authorized participant for exchange-traded products, crypto ETFs included. It now settles digital securities transactions itself, without engaging an external clearing broker. Previously, the firm depended on licensed partners for each of these functions.
Authorized participants are the control point of every ETF. Only they may create new fund shares or redeem existing ones by swapping the underlying asset for shares. As a result, the price of an exchange-traded product stays close to net asset value. For example, with a Bitcoin ETF, the AP delivers Bitcoin or the cash equivalent. In return, it receives new shares. If the market price diverges from the value of the holdings, then it earns the difference. Without this cycle, a fund would drift systematically away from its intrinsic value. Yet exactly this role remained closed to crypto-native trading houses until now.
Self-clearing lowers costs and shortens settlement paths, because no third party sits between trade and settlement. Crypto ETFs link two settlement worlds, since the shares run through securities infrastructure and the underlying asset through blockchains. At this seam, a crypto-native market maker sits closer to the underlying than a classic Wall Street address. Until now, though, Wintermute's reach ended at the border to US securities infrastructure. The firm did quote prices for digital assets worldwide. Still, it could not take part in creating and redeeming ETF shares. Therefore the business stayed limited to spot and derivatives markets. The license removes that separation. The provider consequently moves within the same regulatory perimeter as the Wall Street houses it wants to compete against.
Institutional clients are already lining up
Wintermute is not starting the US business from scratch. The firm had already won ETF issuers as clients before the license even became active. Issuers need at least one authorized participant for every new fund, one that creates and redeems shares. Instead of waiting for demand, the house is therefore working through a queue. For a newcomer in the US securities business, that is a comparatively comfortable starting position.
The client mix has shifted noticeably of late. In the first half of 2026, institutional clients accounted for 72% of spot OTC volume, after 59% a year earlier. OTC business runs through bilaterally negotiated blocks rather than open order books. Institutional addresses demand regulated counterparties with documented settlement paths. Broker-dealer status delivers exactly that proof. Consequently, the business focus shifts from pure crypto proprietary trading toward services for regulated institutions.
The company has prepared the step for more than a year. First came a prominent addition to the New York headquarters in May 2025. Ron Hammond, who previously worked for the Blockchain Association, took on the role of Head of Policy and Advocacy. In September 2025, the firm additionally submitted a position statement to the SEC Crypto Task Force. In it, Wintermute argued that broker-dealers should trade tokenized securities freely for their own account. The submission also called for custody in wallet software. The agency later recorded the meeting in a separate memo. These positions cover exactly the stages that are meant to follow the current license.
The oligopoly Wintermute is pushing into
BlackRock's iShares Bitcoin Trust launched in January 2024 with four authorized participants: Jane Street, JPMorgan, Macquarie and UBS. In April 2024, Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, Citadel Securities and ABN AMRO joined. The list appears in every fund's prospectus and has grown step by step since. By the end of June 2026, the circle counted around a dozen houses. Still, no crypto-native firm was among them. Addresses that built their business on Wall Street therefore serve the world's largest Bitcoin fund.
One level up, the circle is even tighter. At the NYSE, only three houses hold designated market maker status: Citadel Securities, Virtu Americas, GTS Securities. The exchange assigns exactly one DMM to each listed stock, and that firm must provide liquidity. Anyone seeking the status must moreover hold at least USD 75 million in capital before inventory risk. Citadel Securities serves more than 1,900 NYSE names and thus around 62% of all listings. In over 80% of recent NYSE IPOs, this same house likewise ran the opening auction.
The scale of the opponent is easy to quantify. Citadel Securities posted trading revenue of USD 12.2 billion in 2025. In the first quarter of 2026 alone, another USD 4.3 billion came on top. In addition, around 35% of all US retail order flow runs through the company. At the same time, the circle of licensed market participants keeps shrinking. FINRA supervised 3,184 broker-dealers at the end of 2025, against 3,394 in 2021. Free seats rarely open up in this field. Wintermute nevertheless steps in as a challenger without an equities track record.
Gaevoy's phased plan toward market maker status
The roadmap runs in stages, and every single one needs a separate approval. First, Wintermute targets commodity and digital asset ETFs, the segment closest to its existing trading business. Tokenized stocks come next, provided the regulators agree. Last comes the status as designated market maker on a major exchange. The capital requirement of USD 75 million applies only at that last stage. Overall, Gaevoy budgets three to five years to catch up with Jump Trading, Jane Street and Citadel Securities.
The regulatory framework is likewise moving in the same direction. In March 2026, the SEC approved a Nasdaq rule for trading tokenized stocks. In June 2026, Intercontinental Exchange, owner of the NYSE, founded a joint venture with the trading platform OKX. Both steps bring the tokenization of traditional securities closer to market infrastructure. Regulated trading in tokenized stocks would ultimately be the precondition for Wintermute's second stage. Still, every further leg hangs on an individual decision by supervisors and exchanges. So far, regulators have granted only the first.
Gaevoy justifies the push with the convergence of both markets.
"Digital assets and traditional financial markets will continue to develop in parallel, intersect in new ways and ultimately converge more strongly. As that plays out, the firms that succeed will be those with the technical and operational expertise to act in both worlds." - Evgeny Gaevoy, founder and CEO, Wintermute
The statement also describes the business model the firm wants to build in the US. Crypto-native trading technology meets regulated securities infrastructure here. However, only the coming approvals will decide whether that turns into a serious competitor for Citadel Securities.
