Wintermute Extends Trading to Prediction Markets with Two-Sided Liquidity
In brief
- Wintermute will provide two-sided markets on prediction market platforms without naming specific venues
- Wintermute handles $3.5 trillion annual trading volume across spot, derivatives, DeFi, and OTC
- Kalshi and Polymarket process $5.8 billion weekly notional volume with 42.7 million transactions
- Prediction markets evolve from niche forecasting tools into mainstream event-risk trading venues
Wintermute expands into prediction markets
Wintermute announced it is extending its institutional trading to prediction markets, joining a sector that's grown into a major financial venue. The firm already manages spot, derivatives, decentralized finance and over-the-counter crypto markets. Now it's targeting the prediction market space with the same institutional liquidity infrastructure it brings to traditional crypto trading.
Jake Ostrovskis, head of OTC trading at Wintermute, framed the move as a response to a structural gap. "For these markets to become a reliable real-time source of probability estimates, they need sustained two-sided liquidity. That depth tightens spreads, supports larger trade sizes, and in turn improves the signal embedded in market prices," he said in a statement.
The liquidity gap
Prediction markets have the "demand profile" of a major asset class but the liquidity profile of an "early-stage one," according to Ostrovskis. That gap is real. The two leading prediction markets, Kalshi and Polymarket, have a notional weekly volume of around $5.8 billion with almost 400,000 active markets and 42.7 million weekly transactions.
Kalshi, which is regulated by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, has the largest market share with 70% of the volume. Politics and sports dominate the betting on both platforms.
Market evolution
Wintermute said prediction markets are moving from a "niche forecasting tool" into a broader venue for trading event risk. The firm's entry signals institutional confidence in the sector's maturation. By committing to continuous two-sided pricing, Wintermute is betting it can tighten spreads and attract larger institutional flows to markets that have historically operated with wider bid-ask gaps and lower depth.
