Wintermute crosses the Wall Street picket line, registers as US broker-dealer 🏦

Wintermute USA LLC has registered with the US Securities and Exchange Commission and the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA), expanding the crypto market maker's footprint into traditional finance. The affiliate of trading firm Wintermute announced the registration on Thursday, securing authorization to trade stocks and stock options in the United States.

The registration also allows Wintermute USA to act as an authorized participant for exchange-traded products, including those tied to digital assets. Authorized participants serve as the facilitators of the ETF creation and redemption process in capital markets. A broker-dealer is a financial entity that assists in the trading of securities on behalf of customers, on its own account, or both.

Wintermute said the move positions the firm for the emerging tokenized securities landscape. "Our long-term conviction has always been that digital asset markets will evolve in more than one direction," said Evgeny Gaevoy, founder and CEO of Wintermute. "Digital assets and traditional finance will continue to develop in parallel, intersect in new ways, and ultimately integrate more deeply. As the landscape evolves, the firms that succeed will be those that have technical and operational know-how to operate in both."

The London-based firm becomes the latest crypto-native company to seek deeper integration with US-regulated financial infrastructure as tokenization efforts accelerate across the industry. Wintermute's US arm will operate under the existing regulatory framework that governs broker-dealers and authorized participants, the company said.