Wintermute OTC Trading Volume Records 400% Growth by 2023: Report

Wintermute – the leading market maker and liquidity provider – has seen continued growth in 2023 despite market downturns across all business verticals.

In a new report, the platform revealed that over 400% of its over-the-counter (OTC) buy volume was withdrawn from exchanges throughout the year.

In the first half of 2023, Wintermutt's OTC trading volume decreased, although the number of individual transactions remained stable. However, this particular business gained favor in the second half of the platform, increasing sixfold to 29 million. Meanwhile, Wintermuth's weekly OTC volume reached $2 billion during the same period.

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Wintermuth OTC Volumes 4x

According to the report, Wintermuth experienced high trading activity in H2 2023 as the markets started to pick up. The platform has seen a more than six-fold increase to over 29 million trades. Likewise, it recorded the highest OTC volume week, surpassing $2 billion during this period.

This shows a 20% increase in transaction of special assets compared to H1 of 2023.

Transaction volumes for OTC Tier 1 assets mirrored the general trend of Wintermute's overall OTC volumes, roughly halving between H2 2022 and H1 2023. Dominant, trading through OTC desk accounts for 68% market share.

The Solana, Avalanche, Cardano and Polkadot ecosystems comprise the top 5 tier 1 platforms by volume in H2 2023. Unlike Ethereum, most of these Layer 1s have shown resilience and an increase in trading volume in H1 2023, with the exception of Polkadot, which experienced a slight decline in the first half of 2023.

Layer 2 platforms showed roughly 30 times less transaction activity compared to Layer 1s, with Polygon, Arbitrum, and Optimum ecosystems leading the way. Wintermute has seen consistent activity and growth in Layer 2s, recording a whopping 160% growth from H2 2022 to H2 2023.

DeFi remains strong

Wintermute has seen sevenfold growth in nominal volumes from H2 2022 to H2 2023 in the DeFicategory. However, its market share dropped from 16 percent to 11 percent.

Farming assets are the most traded in the DeFi category, followed by Oracles, Lending and DEX tokens.

The UK-based crypto market maker found that the dominance of productivity farm assets has remained strong throughout the year, maintaining a 35% share of DeFi. During the same period, transaction volume increased more than ninefold. Meanwhile, Oracle assets rebounded strongly after experiencing a slight decline in both volumes, representing 26 percent of all traded DeFi category volumes in H2 2023.

Additionally, DEX assets have experienced a significant decline in DeFi market share over the same period, but have seen a more than 3.4x increase in transactions. Lender-related assets gained an additional 10 percentage points in market share, growing from 13 percent to 23 percent in 2023 from H1 to H2.

Last year, Wintermuth was hacked for $160 million. Experts said the exploit could be an inside job, which was dismissed by the forum.