Wintermute Secures US Broker-Dealer License, Blurs Lines Between Wall Street and Crypto

Wintermute, a leading crypto liquidity provider, has secured a broker-dealer license in the US, allowing it to operate on Wall Street. The company's New York-based subsidiary, Wintermute USA LLC, registered with the SEC and became a member of FINRA on August 6.

The license enables Wintermute to provide liquidity in over-the-counter transactions involving US equities, options, and security-based instruments while trading for its own account. This is a significant milestone for the company, which has over $10 billion in average daily trading activity across 60-plus centralized and decentralized platforms.

Wintermute's founder and CEO Evgeny Gaevoy stated that the registration is a result of several years of working with American authorities and positions Wintermute USA for the emerging tokenized securities landscape. The company plans to expand into tokenized real-world assets, including its recent OTC trading service for tokenized gold products like PAXG and XAUT.

The development indicates that regulators are beginning to consider blockchain-based finance systems as part of the capital market's ecosystem rather than an alternative system. Wintermute's move comes as tokenization gains momentum across financial markets, with estimates suggesting a $5.5 trillion base-case market by 2030.