Wintermute, one of crypto's largest market makers, confirmed on Friday, May 31, 2026, that it is actively providing two-sided liquidity on prediction market platforms — and a person familiar with the matter told Decrypt that both Polymarket and Kalshi are among the venues. The announcement published that morning makes Wintermute the first major institutional market maker to publicly commit to both platforms simultaneously, creating a mechanical link between two platforms that have long positioned themselves as rivals.
The London-based firm, which says it processes more than $3.5 trillion in annual trading volume, said in its blog post that it has been "quoting two-sided markets across event contracts on leading venues." Event contract trading has surpassed $60 billion in 2026, according to the same announcement — a figure Wintermute used as the headline context for its entry.
Wintermute's Head of OTC Trading Jake Ostrovskis described the current liquidity profile for prediction markets as "early-stage," but framed the firm's participation as structurally necessary for the category to mature. "For these markets to become a reliable real-time source of probability estimates, they need sustained two-sided liquidity," he said in a statement. "That depth tightens spreads, supports larger trade sizes, and in turn improves the signal embedded in market prices."
The distinction Wintermute draws is deliberate: it is acting as a market maker, not a bettor. Rather than taking positions on event outcomes, the firm profits from the spread between buy and sell orders — the same model it uses in crypto spot and derivatives markets. As the Decrypt report put it, liquidity providers in this context are card dealers, not gamblers.
The timing of the announcement adds a second dimension. On the same day, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission issued an order allowing Kalshi to offer perpetual futures in the United States tied to Bitcoin's price. Wintermute entering prediction markets on the same Friday the CFTC expanded Kalshi's product suite is not coincidence — it is the firm moving into a space that is rapidly gaining US regulatory legitimacy.
That context tracks with CEO Evgeny Gaevoy's comments to Bloomberg in February 2025, when he said the firm had plans for a "new added focus on the U.S." Wintermute's prediction market entry is that stated strategy becoming concrete action: the firm is establishing a presence across both the US-regulated venue (Kalshi) and the leading offshore platform (Polymarket) at once.
The Kalshi-Polymarket split has been one of the defining tensions in prediction market coverage over the past year. Kalshi has consistently emphasized its domestic regulatory footing, and has pushed for legislative frameworks that would formalize its US advantage. Polymarket, which processes far higher volumes across global users, operates under a different legal posture. Until now, the two platforms' markets were siloed by that divide. Wintermute quoting both simultaneously means a single market maker is now absorbing order flow on each side — and in principle, capital can move between them in ways that narrow price discrepancies.
That structural link matters for the accuracy of the probabilities both platforms display. Prediction market prices function as real-time estimates only when arbitrage is possible across comparable markets. A market maker bridging two of the largest venues makes those estimates harder to manipulate through isolated, thin trading.
Wintermute said in the blog post that its participation is intended to move these venues "from a nice forecasting tool into a broader venue for trading event risk." The firm also said that providing liquidity helps improve the reliability of the probabilities shown on both platforms — framing the move as infrastructure-building, not just a business opportunity.
The announcement arrives at a moment when institutional money is treating prediction markets as a serious asset class. The $60 billion-plus in 2026 event contract volume that Wintermute cited in its headline — verified against the same blog post — reflects a category that has grown from a niche forecasting tool to a venue that attracts professional traders and increasingly, regulators. The CFTC's same-day action on Kalshi's Bitcoin perpetuals underlines that the regulatory picture is moving in one direction.
For Wintermute, the prediction market entry is consistent with a pattern of moving into new instrument categories early and establishing liquidity infrastructure before competitors arrive. The firm has built dominant market share in crypto spot, perpetuals, and OTC desks using the same model: show up early, quote tight, and capture the spread as volume grows.
Whether prediction markets develop the sustained volume to make that model lucrative at scale is the open question. Ostrovskis called liquidity "early-stage" for a reason. But Wintermute has made its bet: be the infrastructure, not the outcome.
Wintermute blog post published May 31, 2026. Decrypt corroboration published May 31, 2026. Figures sourced to Wintermute company statement.