Evgeny Gaevoy, CEO of the major crypto market maker Wintermute, revealed the firm encountered significant operational issues during the DeFi liquidity crisis around October 11. Speaking on Block's podcast, Gaevoy disclosed that Wintermute suffered from inventory imbalances because assets became stuck on Binance, preventing effective transfers.
Despite the firm's efforts to mitigate the situation—by selling assets on DeFi and attempting to buy on Binance—the transfer constraints exacerbated the liquidity imbalance. This situation ultimately led to circuit breakers being triggered across various DeFi platforms due to asset fragmentation.
The incident highlighted the heightened risks and complexity involved in cross-market arbitrage and DeFi-CEX bridging during periods of stress. Gaevoy noted that Wintermute exhausted its DeFi inventory in its efforts to manage the crisis. His transparency on X (formerly Twitter) has sparked ongoing industry debate about liquidity safety and the need for improved solutions for moving assets between centralized and decentralized exchanges.
October 2025, Cryptoniteuae