Introducing Wintermute NODE, a go to platform to trade anything OTC
Today we are introducing Wintermute NODE, our flagship digital platform that allows institutional investors, blockchain natives and high net worth individuals unparalleled access to OTC crypto trading.
Wintermute has already been known as one of the largest players in OTC, trading with hundreds counterparties and powering some of the largest trading platforms. The introduction of Wintermute NODE brings it to the next level and will allow a much wider audience to get access to the top tier proprietary pricing, more diverse and complex products and institutional grade trading.
Wintermute NODE stands out on three major fundamentals: Variety & Flexibility, Efficiency and Trustworthiness.
1. Variety and Flexibility
Wintermute NODE allows to trade any token, any product, in any way (web interface, API, chat), any time.
Token Coverage
Our counterparties have access to the same tokens our algorithms trade across a wide range of CeFi and DeFi venues. The list of assets includes:
- Top 25 tokens by market cap
- Key tokens in DeFi ecosystems, including Ethereum and L2s, Solana, Terra and more
- A broader range of longer tail assets that Wintermute has access to thanks to our unique Market Maker relationship with protocols
- Tokens that are currently the rage in Web3. We’ve always taken pride in our ability to source liquidity and provide markets on demand, whether it is $SHIB, $DYDX or $APE. We participated in over 95% of Coinbase launches last year in our capacity as liquidity provider, often being the key reason the market would open in a timely and liquid manner
- All major fiat currencies — we worked hard to establish banking relationships to service our diverse counterparty base across the globe
- Throwing stablecoins into the mix, we can trade virtually any pair
Choice of Execution
You can trade with us in the manner that suits you best. One way to do it is as a single risk trade, where you get one price for the full size you want to execute while transferring all the risk to us. We did that when we executed a $200 million $SOL trade last year. Another way is TWAP, where we execute it slower over time against the most active liquidity pools. Like with the rest of our OTC offering, we can make this type of trade both on majors like $BTC (e.g. if you want to slowly accumulate a desired position) or more “exotic” assets like $SHIB (see for example this execution we did for India crypto relief organization).
We are continuously increasing the number of tokens we cover and it will be more than 250 by the time we release this article, but the sheer number of tokens is not the only differentiator for NODE.
Product Coverage
Building on our domain expertise from traditional markets, we expanded our offering into derivatives space. Starting with more straightforward Delta 1 products — perpetuals, futures, CFDs and NDFs, we’ve further leveraged our access to various liquidity pools. Our exposure to DeFi plays further into providing the most comprehensive offering when it comes to matching counterparty’s desired maturity or getting the most competitive funding rates in the market. Our CFD offering is soon to be available in alpha via API to select users, while the tailor made solutions in other delta 1 instruments are enabled on NODE web chat or on Telegram
From the beginning of this year we’ve enabled our options offering to OTC counterparties as well, achieving top 10 spot on Paradigm, the largest options multi-dealer OTC platform. We have moved beyond $BTC and $ETH into other popular assets like $SOL, $AVAX and #1INCH. As always, we have been able to provide some of the best prices in the market thanks to our connectivity to a larger set of trading venues. On top of sourcing liquidity from Deribit, we also have been an early liquidity provider on DeFi options protocols (like Ribbon, Katana, Friktion and many more!). Having access to that liquidity allows us to serve you better when it comes to pricing and execution. At the moment, the full breadth of our options offering is available on NODE web interface via the native chat functionality and we have clear plans to enable it programmatically soon.
Even more interestingly, by combining vanilla options and futures strategies, we enable our counterparties access to a virtually unlimited suite of tailored products. Web3 protocols hedging their treasury exposure, miners matching their liquidity needs or hedge funds looking for a very specific tailor made strategy — we price all of these use cases and and more.
Platform Access
Finally, when it comes to the HOW of execution, we’ve made our offering as flexible as possible to best meet our counterparties’ needs. We use the same communication tools as you when it comes to good old fashioned chat trading — Telegram, Slack or Signal. NODE web interface has a built in chat functionality as well, allowing you to see the prices live and at the same time ask any relevant questions to our team members.
Wintermute NODE web interface is a user-friendly click-to-trade platform that gives access to our top tier proprietary pricing to a much wider audience than previously possible. Now you don’t need to spend scarce IT resources to connect to API, you can just trade with us directly!
Wintermute NODE API access is a core feature of NODE for more bespoke integrations or institutional needs — multiple crypto-native and traditional finance order/execution management systems have routed their clients enabling doing thousands of trades every day with a flexible mary settlement routine allowing them to serve their customers better and achieve true best execution.
Combined together, the variety in token coverage, execution type and tailored derivatives really differentiates NODE from other single dealer platforms.
2. Efficiency
Wintermute NODE offers superior pricing, with no intermediary or service fees
Pricing
Wintermute NODE uses exactly the same pricing as the algorithms used in our proprietary trading business. Our algorithms run 24/7 on 60+ centralized and decentralized exchanges, providing liquidity and trading over $5B a day. Our high volumes and predominantly market making strategies bring us to the lowest fees tiers on exchanges, meaning we are always able to offer a very tight spread.
Zero Service Fees
If you trade on an exchange, a broker platform, an aggregator or many OTC desks, there is a good chance you are already trading with us without knowing it. By connecting to Wintermute NODE directly, you access the source of liquidity bypassing any intermediaries and their explicit or hidden fees. We don’t charge any trading fees — the price you see is the price you get.
Understanding the business model of OTC providers is important. By virtue of being one of the largest high frequency trading (HFT) market makers, we do make money on market making, i.e. the tiny spread on bid and ask on a huge number of transactions. At the same time any aggregator or service provider’s business model would imply making money on taker flow, while market making would be a cost for them. They would also need to add charges on top of prices they get from firms like ours, to get revenue.
This difference in business model also feeds into the way the more advanced orders like TWAP are executed. While most aggregator desks or service providers will simply hit the market, passing the spread and the taker fees to you, we are executing against our internal theoretical prices. This means that during volatile markets your cost of executing TWAP is not going to increase and you might even get better than mid price in case we are “axed the other way” (i.e. if you have a standing TWAP order to buy and Wintermute is positioned to sell, you would get a better price!).
Availability
The stability of our pricing is also very important to us. Our algorithms are running 24/7 and when we are not in the market, we are effectively losing money. Early on, we made a choice to focus on technology instead of hiring scores of support personnel and so we invested heavily into uptime of our core systems over the years. Now this uptime is being directly translated into Wintermute NODE. Whether it is to make sure a multi-day TWAP order runs uninterrupted, or you simply want to make a trade in a timezone of your choice, we will be there.
Margins and Settlements
We put big a emphasis on settlement efficiency. Where possible, we would not require you to prefund a trade and the more you transact with us, the more flexible settlement options we can offer. Operating in crypto for almost five years, we can settle as quickly as native blockchain allows, meaning that the banking is usually the only bottleneck (we do support Silvergate, Signature or BCB). And if you are after T+1 or T+2 settlement to be able to bundle thousands of trades into a few transfers once a day, we can support this as well. When it comes to derivatives margin, we can similarly extend beneficial leverage conditions to high volume counterparties, utilizing similar risk frameworks that we use in our proprietary trading on the key perpetual exchanges like Binance or FTX.
Making sure that our operational efficiency is translated directly into benefits for Wintermute NODE users has been a cornerstone of our Go-to-Market strategy and we can’t wait to extend it to all of you!
3. Trustworthiness
Wintermute NODE is powered by Wintermute, one of the world’s largest and most trusted algorithmic trading firms in crypto.
Market position and integrity
We have been around 2017, building and growing together with the crypto ecosystem. We are organized as a technology company and our mission is to build for the long-term and empower truly innovative decentralized finance.
Since the onset, it has been vitally important for us to have our name associated with the best market practices and we have always invested into building for the long term. It is about our technology, about our relationships with partners and counterparties, and our company culture. We have a transparent and fair culture both internally and externally.
We are one of the largest algorithmic trading firms globally and we have top 1–10 market share on most major exchanges, both CeFi and DeFi, and have very strong relationships with our exchange partners. We are a much recognized name in DeFi, being active there ever since 2019 and establishing relationships with hundreds of protocols, some of which are now market leaders in their respective segments.
Regulatory Compliance
Compliance aspect is another equally important side of the coin. We have invested significant efforts into building robust KYC/AML processes and that was reflected in our successful registration with the FCA under AML-CTF regime for crypto firms. We are justifiably proud to be one of the few companies who have been awarded registration as many companies had faced rejection or had to withdraw. Being under the regulatory gaze can be uncomfortable for some, but for us the benefits clearly outweigh the costs. Even before being regulated, our guiding principle to dealing with counterparties has always been to not engage in anything remotely shady, unethical or something that would not be allowed in comparable traditional financial markets. While being very robust, our onboarding process is also customer-friendly and efficient and we are working hard to further automate and accelerate it.
Bright Future Ahead
Wintermute NODE is not just another single dealer platform! It is going to be the home for all things OTC trading and our roadmap of new products, new features is extremely ambitious. By onboarding to Wintermute NODE, you would be the first to know about all the new additions! Register at node.wintermute.com
