Evgeny Gaevoy began his career in traditional finance, specializing in market making and prop trading. But by 2016, seeing the inefficiencies of legacy financial systems and the potential for disintermediation, Gaevoy realized there was an opportunity to create something entirely new and better.
With experience building up foreign exchange firm Optiver’s European ETF business — one of the largest in the EU — he decided to launch an algorithmic trading firm designed for the digital asset era. Since 2017, Wintermute has grown into one of the largest algorithmic trading and liquidity providers in crypto, processing over $5 billion in daily trading volume and providing deep liquidity to 50+ trading venues across centralized and decentralized exchanges.
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Here, Gaevoy, who will be speaking at Consensus Hong Kong, discusses how Asian crypto markets differ from those in the West, his predictions for the use of AI in trading and market making, and how Wintermute is addressing the growing fragmentation of liquidity across multiple blockchains.
This interview has been condensed and lightly edited for clarity.
What led you to start Wintermute?
I started looking into the blockchain around 2016, which is relatively late compared to some early adopters. At the time, I was in traditional finance and what really interested me was disintermediation — cutting out the inefficiencies of custodians and prime brokers, which were painfully slow in how they operated. Blockchain seemed like a great way to disrupt that.
But back then, it all felt very theoretical. It wasn’t until 2017 that I really immersed myself in crypto. I quit my job, started looking around, and bought a small amount of bitcoin on Coinbase — just to test it out. Then it doubled in price in a week or two, and I barely paid attention because the volatility was just so insane compared to what I was used to in TradFi.
In TradFi market making, there are maybe 10 days a year when things get really exciting — when markets move 3-4%, and that’s considered a big deal. But in crypto, that kind of movement happens all the time. So I figured, I know prop trading, I know market making, and I like building things from scratch — so why not build a market-making business in crypto? That’s how Wintermute was born.
You’ve been actively engaged in both Western and Asian markets — what are the biggest differences you’ve observed between the two?
Regulation-wise, everything is still primarily driven by the U.S. Even in Asia, most companies watch what the U.S. is doing rather than setting their own independent course.
When it comes to OTC and institutional trading, China is the biggest missing piece. Chinese institutions and corporations are still not allowed to touch crypto, and until the Chinese Communist Party changes its stance, we won’t see proper institutional flows from there.
What key opportunities are you seeing coming out of Asia right now?
The most interesting development right now is how certain countries are opening up to crypto in meaningful ways. Japan is becoming increasingly attractive due to its improved tax policies for crypto. By reducing tax burdens on crypto holdings, the country is making it easier for both businesses and individuals to participate in the market without excessive financial penalties. This is a significant move that could drive liquidity and institutional involvement.
South Korea is another exciting case, mainly because of its massive retail market. However, a major limitation is that foreign market makers are still restricted from integrating with local exchanges. If regulators were to allow external liquidity providers to participate, it could unlock a tremendous amount of liquidity. Right now, Korean exchanges remain fairly isolated, which is why we still see phenomena like the Kimchi premium — a direct result of structural barriers preventing global liquidity from flowing freely into the market.
Hong Kong, on the other hand, plays a unique role as a pilot program for China. While China still officially bans crypto, Hong Kong is establishing regulated markets and institutional frameworks that could serve as a testing ground for how China might engage with crypto in the future. This makes Hong Kong an important region to watch, especially in terms of institutional adoption.
The key thing to watch is how these markets evolve, as they each offer different entry points into Asia’s crypto adoption cycle — Japan is attracting institutions with tax incentives, Korea is a retail-heavy market with potential liquidity unlocks, and Hong Kong is a regulatory experiment that could have broader implications for China.
What have been some of the lesser-known or unexpected catalysts driving crypto adoption and liquidity in Asia?
The biggest surprise for me is that many of the narratives we see on Crypto Twitter and from VCs do not reflect what’s actually happening on the ground.
A great example is Tron and Tether. In Asia and Latin America, USDT on Tron is the most widely used crypto asset for payments, especially for the unbanked and those looking to escape currency devaluation. But in the West, this remains largely unrecognized. There are also numerous projects and DeFi protocols that receive little attention in the Western echo chamber but perform exceptionally well in Asia. This emphasizes the importance of maintaining awareness of developments occurring in Asia, rather than solely relying on Western narratives.
Do you think AI will ever autonomously run an entire market-making operation?
AI is already widely used in trading, and it has been for quite some time. Machine learning is nothing new — firms have been using it in prop trading for years. What’s different now is just how much more advanced AI models are getting, and how much raw computing power is being allocated to the problem.
Take XTX for instance, another algorithmic trading firm — they have an enormous number of GPUs dedicated to machine learning and are even building significant data centers in Finland specifically to run their AI models. It’s not a groundbreaking change in trading, but the scale of implementation is rapidly increasing.
Will AI completely replace human traders? I don’t think so — at least not in the next 5-10 years. The biggest limiting factor is how much you can automate.
Currently, there are various styles of market-making firms — some heavily rely on AI while others integrate a substantial amount of human input. Wintermute occupies a middle ground. We leverage AI where it makes sense but still depend significantly on human decision-making, especially concerning market dynamics that AI does not yet fully comprehend.
The real challenge lies in adapting AI to a market like crypto, which remains unstable and lacks the structured data sets available to traditional finance firms. AI excels in pattern recognition, but it still struggles with unforeseen events and extreme market volatility. Until AI can fully adapt to sudden market shifts, human traders will continue to play a vital role.
How does Wintermute approach the challenge of liquidity becoming increasingly fragmented across different blockchains?
At Wintermute, our core strategy is to enable and encourage as much diversity as possible concerning blockchains, centralized exchanges, and decentralized exchanges. We do not view fragmentation as a negative development — it, in fact, presents us with more opportunities.
As it stands, we are connected to all major centralized exchanges, a wide array of OTC counterparties, and numerous DeFi ecosystems. This diversity serves as our competitive advantage. Instead of waiting for the market to consolidate, we embrace fragmentation and position ourselves to be present wherever liquidity exists.
Could the situation evolve towards greater centralization over time? Perhaps, but I remain skeptical, at least not in a manner akin to traditional finance. In traditional finance, you have CME for derivatives, a limited number of prominent stock exchanges, and relatively few key players.
In contrast, crypto is fundamentally decentralized, and I believe it will remain that way. There will always be new blockchains, new trading venues, and new liquidity pools. Instead of centralizing into a few dominant entities, I anticipate an ongoing expansion of ecosystems — and firms like Wintermute must be agile enough to function within all of them.
What are you most excited to discuss on stage at Consensus Hong Kong?
One topic I am eager to address is market structure and the role of market makers in crypto. There are many misconceptions regarding what we do. For instance, if you peruse Crypto Twitter, you’ll encounter individuals blaming market makers for inciting price crashes, which simply is not how the system operates. There exists a significant misunderstanding about our role, operations, and how we provide liquidity. I look forward to dispelling some of those myths, elucidating how the market truly functions, and perhaps even challenging some of the misguided narratives that persist.
