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- Wintermute experienced a remarkable 400% surge in OTC trading in 2023.
- Payment-related assets were reportedly the most traded crypto after Bitcoin and Ethereum.
- Ethereum was the Layer 1 with the most OTC trading volume, per the report.
Crypto market maker Wintermute has reported a 13% decline in overall volumes on exchanges in 2023; however, its over-the-counter (OTC) volumes have surged by 400%.
Despite the general market downturn, Wintermute has experienced continued growth in 2023, as outlined in a recently published report. In detail, Wintermute stated that in the first half of 2023, OTC trading volumes initially experienced a decrease, but the second half saw a significant increase in OTC trading volumes.
“We saw a significant increase in trading activity, with the number of traders growing over 6x, making up over 29M trades,” the report claimed. Moreover, Wintermute saw the largest OTC volume week in the second half of 2023, surpassing $2 billion.
The market maker reportedly traded 206 unique assets and 495 pairs in OTC in 2023, a 20% increase from the first half of the year. The report showed that payments-related assets were the most traded cryptocurrency category after Bitcoin and Ethereum, which held the first and second positions across all periods. According to the report, the growth in the payments category was partially driven by XRP after the court ruling.
Additionally, OTC trading volumes for Layer 1 assets experienced an initial decline in the first half of 2023 but rebounded with a 350% surge in the second half. The Layer 1 ecosystem with the most OTC trading volume was Ethereum, with a 68% market share, according to the report.
Following Ethereum, the report showed that Solana, Avalanche, Cardano, and Polkadot were among the top five Layer 1s in terms of volumes in the second half of 2023. In contrast, Layer 2s saw approximately 30 times less trading activity compared to Layer 1s, with Polygon, Arbitrum, and Optimism ranking as the top three.
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