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Cryptocurrency market maker Wintermute has raised $20 million in a Series B funding round to expand into new businesses and geographies.

The round was backed by Pantera Capital, Fidelity’s Avon Ventures, and Sino Global Capital, among others. Existing investors Blockchain.com Ventures and Lightspeed Venture Partners also participated in the round. 

In a note to The Block, Wintermute said that it is “highly profitable,” but needed the fresh injection of capital to beef up its balance sheet to woo larger counter-parties to its over-the-counter (OTC) trading platform. The firm said that the round was “substantially oversubscribed,” noting that some employees also participated. 

Wintermute makes markets across 50 cryptocurrency exchanges and traded more than $30 billion in December 2020 alone. The firm said it is on track to double that amount this month.

Wintermute is currently piloting its own OTC request-for-quote platform with several beta counter-parties and plans to launch the service within the first quarter of the year, CEO Evgeny Gaevoy told The Block. He added that the entrance of new institutional capital has made this a more attractive opportunity for the firm. In recent months, well-known investors ranging from Anthony Scaramaccui to Stanley Druckenmiller have publicized their recent bets on cryptocurrency. 

“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,” said Gaevoy. “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.”

The firm continues to see an opportunity in the burgeoning market for decentralized finance (DeFi), which has been a “major growth point.” Wintermute also plans to expand its operations to Asia where it will launch a physical presence in Singapore this quarter. 

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