Dozens of Wintermute Traders Became Millionaires Before Crypto Crashed

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Traders at a London-based cryptocurrency trading firm earned an average of $2.3m ($1.9m) each in the year before the $1tn markets crash, he emerged.

Wintermute, one of the world’s fastest growing cryptocurrency hedge funds, paid its 36 UK employees a total of $83 million in 2021, newly filed accounts reveal.

The numbers suggest the company hit 30 crypto millionaires before the recent crash in the markets, with an average payout of $2.3 million each. The big rewards came before $1 trillion was wiped from the value of the cryptocurrency market in a historic crash.

Wintermute made $582 million in profit in the 12 months to December 2021, with revenue growing from just $40.4 million in 2020 to $818.5 million.

The company, named after an artificial intelligence from the 1984 sci-fi novel Neuromancer, has become one of the leading market makers and liquidity providers in the turbulent cryptocurrency industry. Wintermute is one of the most prominent UK crypto companies, with most of the major players based in the US or Asia.

Wintermute’s algorithms aim to extract tiny fractions of dollars from arbitrage – or price difference – across millions of trades. It traded around $1.5 billion in cryptocurrencies in 2021.

Directors, including founder Evgeny Gaevoy, shared fees worth $31 million in 2021, according to the accounts. The highest-paid director earned $22.5 million, up from $1.6 million the previous year. Mr Gaevoy, 38, who runs the fund with his wife Marina Gurevich, raised initial funding for Wintermute in 2018.

The crypto trader grew up and was educated in Russia, before moving to Amsterdam in 2006, then moving to London in 2017.

After enjoying a surge in profits as prices soared in 2021, Wintermutes revenue has fallen so far this year, in line with the tank market. The company reported revenue of $225 million in the first nine months of 2022, Forbes reported.

It also suffered a $160 million hack in September, Mr Gaevoy said at the time, resulting from human error that left one of its digital wallets exposed.

Wintermute is now one of the biggest market makers in the digital currency markets after the implosion of FTX and its sister hedge fund Alameda Research. FTX filed for bankruptcy in November with an $8 billion black hole in its accounts after using customer deposits to fuel risky trades at Alameda.

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