Traders at a London-based cryptocurrency trading company made an average of $2.3m (£1.9m) each in the year prior to the market’s $1trn collapse, it has emerged.
Wintermute, one of the world’s fastest-growing cryptocurrency hedge funds, paid its 36 UK staff a total of $83m in 2021, newly filed accounts reveal.
The figures suggest the company minted 30 crypto millionaires prior to the market’s recent collapse, with an average payout of $2.3m each. The large rewards came before $1trn was wiped off the value of the cryptocurrency market in a historic crash.
Wintermute made $582m in profits in the 12 months to December 2021 as revenues surged from just $40.4m in 2020 to $818.5m.
The company, named after an artificial intelligence from the 1984 science fiction novel Neuromancer, has emerged as one of the pivotal market makers and liquidity providers in the turbulent cryptocurrency industry. Wintermute is one of the most high-profile British crypto businesses, with most major players based in the US or Asia.
Wintermute’s algorithms aim to make tiny fractions of a dollar from the arbitrage – or the price difference – on millions of trades. It traded around $1.5trn in cryptocurrencies in 2021.
Directors, including founder Evgeny Gaevoy, shared fees worth $31m in 2021, accounts show. The highest paid director secured $22.5m, up from $1.6m a year earlier. 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 and later relocating to London in 2017.
After enjoying surging profits while prices soared in 2021, Wintermute’s revenues have fallen so far this year in line with the tanking market. The company reported revenues of $225m in the first nine months of 2022, Forbes reported.
It also suffered a $160m 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 digital currency market’s largest market makers after the implosion of FTX and its sister hedge fund Alameda Research. FTX filed for bankruptcy in November with an $8bn black hole in its accounts after it used customer deposits to fuel risky trades at Alameda.
