Evgeny Gaevoy began his career in traditional finance, specializing in market manufacturing and accessories trading. But in 2016, seeing the ineffectiveness of inherited financial systems and the potential for disintermediation, Gaevoy realized that there was an opportunity to create something completely new and better.
With an experience of building the Optiver European ETF exchange company, one of the largest in the EU – he decided to launch an algorithmic negotiation company designed for the era of digital assets. Since 2017, Wintermute has since become one of the largest providers of trading and algorithmic liquidity in crypto, dealing with more than $ 5 billion in daily negotiation volume and providing profound liquidity to more than 50 negotiations through centralized and decentralized exchanges.
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Here, Gaevoy, who will express themselves in the Hong Kong consensus, explains how the Asian cryptocurrency differs from those of the West, how it predicts that AI will be used in the trade and manufacturing of the market and how wintermute Reacts to the growing fragmentation of liquidity through several multiple and blockchains.
This interview was condensed and slightly modified for more clarity.
What led you to start winter winter?
I started studying the blockchain around 2016, which is relatively late compared to certain early adopters. At the time, I was in traditional finance and what really interested me was disintermediation – to remove the ineffectiveness of the guardians and first -rate brokers, who were painfully slow in their functioning. The blockchain seemed to be a great way to disturb this.
But at the time, everything seemed very theoretical. It was not until 2017 that I really entered the crypto. I left my job, I started looking around and bought a small amount of bitcoin on Coinbase – just to test it. Then he doubled the price in a week or two, and I barely be careful because volatility was so crazy about what I was used to in Tradfi.
In the manufacture of the Tradfi market, perhaps 10 days a year ago where things become really exciting – when the markets move from 3 to 4%, and it is considered a big problem. But in crypto, this kind of movement occurs all the time. So I told myself that I know the exchanges of accessories, I know the manufacture of the market and I like to build things from zero – so why not create a market manufacturing business in crypto? This is how winter winter.
Have you actively participated in Western and Asian markets – what are the biggest differences you have observed between the two?
On the regulation side, everything is still mainly motivated by the United States, even in Asia, most companies are watching what the United States does rather than defining its own independent course.
Regarding the crising and institutional trade, China is the largest missing piece. Chinese institutions and societies are still not allowed to touch the crypto, and as long as the Chinese Communist Party change its position, we will not see the appropriate institutional flows from there.
What key opportunities are you seeing out of Asia right now?
The most interesting development at the moment is the way some countries are opening up to crypto significantly. Japan is becoming more and more attractive because of its improved tax policies for the crypto. By reducing tax charges on crypto holdings, the country facilitates businesses and individuals to participate in the market without excessive financial sanctions. This is an important decision that could stimulate liquidity and institutional participation.
South Korea is another exciting case, mainly because of its massive retail market. However, a major limitation is that decision -makers of the foreign market are always linked to integration into local exchanges. If the regulators allowed external liquidity providers to participate, this could unlock an enormous amount of liquidity. Currently, Korean exchanges remain quite isolated, which is why we always see phenomena like the Kimchi premium – the direct result of the structural barriers preventing global liquidity from flowing freely on the market.
Hong Kong, on the other hand, plays a unique role as a pilot program for China. While China still officially prohibits the crypto, Hong Kong establishes regulated markets and institutional executives who could serve as a test field on how China could engage with the crypto in the future. This makes Hong Kong an important region to monitor, in particular in terms of institutional adoption.
The key to monitoring is how these markets are evolving, because they each offer different entry points in the adoption cycle of cryptography in Asia – Japan attracts institutions with tax incentives, Korea is a market Detail with unlocking potential liquidity and Hong Kong is an experience regulatory regulation which could have wider implications for China.
What were some of the less known or unexpected catalysts leading to the adoption and liquidity of cryptography in Asia?
The biggest surprise for me is that many stories that we see on Crypto Twitter and VCs do not reflect what is really happening on the ground.
An excellent example is tron and Tether. In Asia and Latin America, the USDT on Tron is the most used cryptographic asset for payments, especially for non -banished and those who seek to escape the devaluation of money. But in the West, no one is talking about it. There are also a lot of DEFI projects and protocols that are ignored in the Western Echo room but which are doing very well in Asia. This is why I think it is crucial to keep an impulse on what is happening in Asia, rather than simply counting on Western stories.
Do you think that AI will never direct an full implementation operation independently?
AI is already widely used in trading, and it has been doing it for some time. Automatic learning is not new – companies have used it for accessories for years. What is different now is how advanced AI models are more advanced, and the quantity of gross calculation power that is launched on the problem.
Take XTX for example, (another algorithmic trading company) – they have a mad amount of IPS dedicated to automatic learning. They even build huge data centers in Finland just to manage their AI models. It is not something new in trading, but the scale at which it is deployed increases quickly.
Will AI completely replace human traders? I do not think – at least not in the next 5 to 10 years. The largest limiting factor is how you can really automate.
Currently, you have different styles of market companies – some are counting strongly on AI, while others still have a lot of human contribution. Wintermute falls somewhere in the middle. We use AI where it makes sense, but there is still a lot of human decision -making involved, especially with regard to market dynamics that AI does not yet understand completely.
The real challenge is to adapt AI to a market like crypto, which is always very unpredictable and does not have the structured data sets to which traditional financing companies have access. AI is excellent for the recognition of models, but it always fights with black swan events and very volatile markets. Until the AI reaches a level where it can fully adapt to unexpected market changes, humans will always play an important role.
How does the winter winter tackle the challenge of liquidity increasingly fragmented in different blockchains?
At Wintermute, our basic strategy is to facilitate and promote as much diversity as possible with regard to blockchains, centralized exchanges and decentralized exchanges. We do not see fragmentation as a bad thing – it actually creates more opportunities for us.
Currently, we are connected to all major centralized exchanges, a wide range of over -the -counter counterparts and dozens of DEFI ecosystems. This diversity is our competitive advantage. Instead of waiting for the market to converge, we embrace the fragmentation and we position to be everywhere, liquidity exists.
Could things become more centralized over time? Maybe, but I don’t think, at least not in the way Tradfi works. In traditional finance, you have a CME for derivatives, some dominant scholarships and a relatively low number of key players.
The crypto is different. He is intrinsically decentralized, and I think that will remain like this. There will always be new blocks of blocks, new commercial places and new liquidity pools. Instead of everything that is consolidated in a few great actors, I think we will see a continuous expansion of ecosystems – and companies like Wintermute must be agile enough to operate in each of them.
What are you happy to discuss Hong Kong consensus on stage?
One of the things I would like to talk about is the structure of the market and the role of market manufacturers in the crypto. There are so many false ideas about what we do. For example, if you go to Crypto Twitter, you will see people blame market manufacturers for causing price accidents, which is simply not and it works. There is this huge misunderstanding about what market manufacturers really do, how we operate and how we provide liquidity. I would like to dispel some of these myths, explain how the market really works and perhaps even challenge some of the false stories that are there.
