Wintermute USA has registered with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) as a broker-dealer in early August and joined FINRA, the self-regulatory organization that oversees US broker-dealers. Armed with the license, CEO Evgeny Gaevoy now aims to close the gap with Citadel Securities and Jane Street within three to five years.

Wintermute ranks among the largest market makers in the crypto market, quoting continuous bid and ask prices for digital assets across more than 60 centralized and decentralized venues. Average daily volume exceeds USD 10 billion. The firm established its US presence in May 2025 with its own headquarters in New York. However, without broker-dealer status, the trading house had been locked out of crypto ETF settlement. For context, BlackRock's iShares Bitcoin Trust alone held USD 43.2 billion in assets at the end of June 2026, served by roughly a dozen authorized participants — none of which are crypto-native firms. The opportunity extends well beyond a single product: since US spot Bitcoin ETFs launched in January 2024, followed by spot Ethereum ETFs later that year, the category has grown into one of the most successful ETF launches by assets under management, expanding the addressable market for any firm that can operate as an authorized participant.

What the Broker-Dealer License Unlocks

SEC registration and FINRA membership simultaneously open three business lines for Wintermute's US unit. The firm may now trade traditional stocks and stock options for its own account. It can also serve as an authorized participant for exchange-traded products (ETPs), including crypto ETFs. Additionally, it now settles digital securities transactions in-house without engaging an external clearing broker. Previously, the firm relied on licensed partners for each of these functions.

Authorized participants form the critical control point of every ETF. Only they may create new fund shares or redeem existing ones by swapping the underlying asset for shares, keeping the market price of an exchange-traded product close to its net asset value. In a Bitcoin ETF, for instance, the AP delivers Bitcoin or the cash equivalent and receives new shares in return. If the market price diverges from the value of the holdings, the AP captures the difference. Without this arbitrage cycle, a fund would drift systematically away from its intrinsic value. Until now, this role has been effectively closed to crypto-native trading houses.

Self-clearing reduces costs and shortens settlement paths by eliminating the third party between trade execution and settlement. Crypto ETFs sit at the intersection of two settlement worlds: fund shares move through traditional securities infrastructure, while the underlying asset settles on blockchains. At this seam, a crypto-native market maker operates closer to the underlying asset than a conventional Wall Street firm. Prior to the license, Wintermute's capabilities ended at the boundary of US securities infrastructure. The firm quoted prices for digital assets worldwide but could not participate in ETF share creation and redemption, limiting its business to spot and derivatives markets. The license dissolves that barrier, placing the firm within the same regulatory perimeter as the Wall Street houses it intends to challenge.

Institutional Clients Already in Queue

Wintermute is not entering the US securities business from zero. The firm had already secured ETF issuers as clients before the license took effect. Since issuers require at least one authorized participant for every new fund — one capable of creating and redeeming shares — the firm is working through a backlog of demand rather than waiting for it to materialize. For a newcomer in the US securities business, that represents a comparatively strong starting position.

The client mix has shifted markedly. In the first half of 2026, institutional clients accounted for 72% of spot OTC volume, up from 59% a year earlier. OTC business operates through bilaterally negotiated block trades rather than open order books. Institutional clients demand regulated counterparties with documented settlement paths — and broker-dealer status provides precisely that credential. As a result, the business focus is moving from pure crypto proprietary trading toward services for regulated institutions.

The company has been laying groundwork for over a year. In May 2025, alongside opening its New York headquarters, Wintermute appointed Ron Hammond — formerly of the Blockchain Association — as Head of Policy and Advocacy. In September 2025, the firm submitted a position statement to the SEC Crypto Task Force arguing that broker-dealers should be permitted to trade tokenized securities freely for their own account. The filing also advocated for custody within wallet software. The SEC later recorded the meeting in a separate memo. These positions map directly onto the regulatory stages intended 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, which appears in every fund's prospectus, has expanded incrementally since then. By the end of June 2026, the group numbered roughly a dozen houses — still without a single crypto-native firm among them. Consequently, institutions rooted in traditional Wall Street serve the world's largest Bitcoin fund. While some crypto exchanges have pursued broker-dealer registrations for other business lines, no crypto-native market maker has previously broken into the authorized participant circle for crypto ETPs — a gap Wintermute now positions itself to fill.

At the exchange level, the circle tightens further. At the NYSE, only three firms hold designated market maker (DMM) status: Citadel Securities, Virtu Americas, and GTS Securities. The exchange assigns exactly one DMM to each listed stock, and that firm is obligated to provide liquidity. Candidates for DMM status must hold at least USD 75 million in capital before accounting for inventory risk. Citadel Securities alone serves more than 1,900 NYSE-listed names — approximately 62% of all listings — and ran the opening auction in over 80% of recent NYSE IPOs.

The competitive scale is readily quantifiable. Citadel Securities reported trading revenue of USD 12.2 billion in 2025, followed by an additional USD 4.3 billion in the first quarter of 2026 alone. Approximately 35% of all US retail order flow routes through the firm. Meanwhile, the pool of licensed market participants continues to contract: FINRA supervised 3,184 broker-dealers at the end of 2025, down from 3,394 in 2021. That contraction reflects broader consolidation in US equities market making, where high-frequency trading infrastructure and regulatory compliance costs have raised barriers to entry. Openings in this field are rare, yet Wintermute enters as a challenger with no equities track record.

Gaevoy's Phased Roadmap

The roadmap unfolds in stages, each requiring separate regulatory approval. Wintermute first targets commodity and digital asset ETFs — the segment nearest to its existing trading operations. Tokenized stocks follow, contingent on regulatory clearance. The final stage is designated market maker status on a major exchange, where the USD 75 million capital requirement applies. Gaevoy has budgeted three to five years overall to reach parity with Jump Trading, Jane Street, and Citadel Securities.

The regulatory landscape is moving in a complementary direction. In March 2026, the SEC approved a Nasdaq rule permitting the trading of tokenized stocks. In June 2026, Intercontinental Exchange — owner of the NYSE — established a joint venture with trading platform OKX. Both developments advance the tokenization of traditional securities toward market infrastructure integration, signaling that exchanges and regulators are building the rails for exactly the convergence Wintermute's strategy depends on. Regulated trading in tokenized stocks would serve as the precondition for Wintermute's second stage. Nonetheless, each subsequent phase depends on individual decisions by supervisors and exchanges. To date, regulators have approved only the first stage.

Gaevoy frames the strategic push around the convergence of digital and traditional finance:

"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 encapsulates the business model Wintermute intends to build in the United States: crypto-native trading technology integrated with regulated securities infrastructure. Whether that vision translates into a serious challenge to Citadel Securities and its peers will depend on the regulatory approvals yet to come.