Wintermute liquidity expands Solana market execution

Professional capital moves into Solana

Solana commands over 50% of total DEX volume. Jupiter alone handles nearly 70% of Solana transaction volume. Professional capital increasingly uses OTC desks to manage large orders without hitting public order books. Institutional clients drove 72% of Wintermute’s spot OTC volume in H1 2026. This figure rose from 59% in H1 2025. The shift toward professional capital indicates that large traders, funds, market makers, and structured product desks move into parts of the crypto market that do not appear on public exchange order books. You should recognize that institutional flows influence liquidity without controlling prices. These institutions focus on highly liquid assets before expanding into Solana, stablecoin rails, or DeFi infrastructure. This trend follows a period where trading volume from traditional financial institutions grew 240% and average trade sizes increased by 17%. In 2025, the combined share of Bitcoin and Ethereum in total trading volume dropped from 54% to 49%. This transition follows a period where Wintermute’s OTC trading volume grew by 313% and over 300 new independent trading pairs entered the market. In 2025, market activity often focused on the first half of the year, with a strong start followed by weakening in spring and summer. The 2025 market experienced volatile movements where price fluctuations came from short-term trends rather than longer-term seasonal changes. Risk sentiment deteriorated in the first quarter of 2025 as meme coin and AI agent narratives cooled. In 2024, the SEC approved Bitcoin and Ethereum spot ETFs, which helped eliminate barriers for traditional financial participants.

Execution mechanics for large orders

Whales avoid public exchanges to reduce slippage and protect trading intent. An OTC trade hides transaction details from the public market and prevents other traders from adjusting positions before execution. Wintermute provides algorithmic liquidity for USDC, USDT, PYUSD, FDUSD, USDe, RLUSD, USDS, and FRAX. Trade minimums fall between mid five and low six figures.

OTC desks connect buyers and sellers through dealer liquidity or counterparty introductions. These desks aggregate liquidity from multiple venues to handle block trades that exceed single venue capacity. An institution buying or selling meaningful size prefers OTC execution because it reduces slippage, protects trading intent, and allows for more customized settlement terms than those available through a simple exchange account. Traders send a request for quote containing the desired asset, direction, size, and settlement instructions. The desk analyzes the request and provides a bid or offer, and the client accepts the terms to avoid the complexity of a large exchange order. Wintermute operates with over $3.5 trillion in annual trading volume and provides global API access with coverage in Asia and the EU. Settlement involves the movement of crypto, fiat currency, or both via agreed terms.

Market liquidity and new venues

Liquidity concentrated heavily in a few large tokens throughout 2025. Prediction markets reached $60B in trading volume in 2026, with more than $20 billion in monthly volume in early 2026. Wintermute provides two-sided liquidity across event contracts to tighten spreads, support larger trade sizes, and improve the signal embedded in market prices. Jake Ostrovskis, Head of OTC Trading at Wintermute, says prediction markets need sustained two-sided liquidity to become reliable real-time sources of probability estimates. This liquidity helps move prediction markets from niche forecasting tools into broader venues for trading event risk. Will institutional volume stay concentrated in Bitcoin and Ethereum as market maturity continues? Prediction markets price real-world uncertainty directly rather than through proxies like equities or currencies. The market overlaps with digital-asset infrastructure since several prediction market venues use stablecoins, public blockchains, or crypto-native settlement systems.