Wintermute just got SEC approval to trade stocks, and crypto market makers are quietly becoming broker dealers

The largest crypto liquidity provider registered with FINRA on August 6. The move signals something larger than one firm’s expansion: the infrastructure that runs crypto markets is migrating onto Wall Street rails. Summary Wintermute USA LLC registered as a broker dealer with the SEC and FINRA on August 6, 2026, establishing the firm as a regulated proprietary trading entity in U.S. markets with the ability to trade equities, equity options, and exchange traded products tied to digital assets. The registration enables Wintermute to act as an authorized participant (AP) for crypto ETPs, meaning it can create and redeem ETF shares directly with issuers, a role that gives it structural access to the arbitrage mechanism that keeps ETF prices aligned with their underlying assets. Wintermute facilitates over $10 billion in average daily trading volume across more than 60 centralized and decentralized exchanges globally, making it one of the largest liquidity providers in crypto and now one of the few firms that can provide liquidity across both crypto native venues and traditional stock exchanges from a single balance sheet. The broker dealer registration follows Crypto.com’s 2024 acquis...