In this episode, we sit down with Evgeny Gaevoy, Founder and CEO of Wintermute, one of the largest crypto-native trading firms in the world. We cover Evgeny’s childhood growing up in post-Soviet Russia, how the chaos and opportunity of the 90s shaped his view of markets, his decade at Optiver, and why he eventually left traditional finance to build Wintermute.
Evgeny walks through the early days of the company, from struggling to raise money from VCs to eventually scaling through DeFi Summer.We also go deep on the evolution of crypto market structure and how Wintermute sees itself. Finally, we talk about Evgeny’s “Golden Path” thesis: why crypto may be losing its original purpose, why institutional adoption is not necessarily the end goal,and why he thinks crypto needs to rediscover meaning beyond speculation.
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Altitude – the global business account with stablecoin and fiat bank transfers, free on-and off-ramps, 5% APY, corporate cards, bill pay, and more.
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Timestamps
(0:00) Intro
(1:07) What is Wintermute
(4:14) Evgeny's upbringing
(15:59) Joining Optiver and learning market making
(26:28) Leaving Optiver, moving to London, and discovering crypto
(36:00) Starting Wintermute and raising from VCs
(41:17) Getting into DeFi before it was obvious
(53:53) How Wintermute avoids bureaucracy and operated like a tech company
(1:03:33) The Golden Path for crypto
(1:23:01) What bad market making behaviour actually looks like
(1:35:33) Evgeny's thoughts on Hyperliquid
(1:39:09) Wintermute's next chapters, and building beyond market making
(1:51:57) DND, Warhammer, and grand strategy games
