🎙️Wintermute's David Micley Says Institutional Investors Are Here To Stay

This week on The Defiant Podcast we speak with David Micley, the business development director at Wintermute, one of the largest digital asset market makers in the world. They run delta-neutral strategies with an average daily trading volume of around five billion dollars. Wintermute’s operations span across OTC, market making, and venture capital, so David keeps a close eye on all aspects of crypto markets.

With all the macro headwinds pummeling markets, from the energy crisis in Europe, global inflation, and war in Ukraine, to the recent turmoil with Credit Suisse, we can’t help but feel a sense of deja vu about the 2008 financial crisis.

David believes we’re just in the first inning of what could be a multi-year crypto winter.

But he’s seeing that institutional investors are still signing up to trade with Wintermute’s OTC desk, which indicates that large players are still committed to the space this time around.

Wintermute relies primarily on arbitrage opportunities for profits and we discuss where those opportunities can be found and how the firm is able to leverage both DeFi and CeFi.

David also shares his views on the venture side of crypto. He believes some of the biggest bets right now are blockchain infrastructure plays. With funding getting harder to come by for crypto startups, he provides insights on where he sees the space evolving.

Finally, we discuss the $160M hack that Wintermute suffered recently and the lessons learned.

🎙Listen to the interview in this week’s podcast episode here:

📺 Watch the video here:

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