The Meme market in 2024 is inseparable from two market makers @DWFlabs @wintermute_t. If your token is held by Wintermute, then congratulations, wait for Binance, because 70% of the meme coins he holds are already listed on Binance

DWF manipulated multiple memes such as $ladys, $floki, and $mog in the first half of the year. The most famous battle was $not. This battle may have indirectly caused DWF to focus on the Ton public chain. DWF was almost invisible behind many well-known memes in the second half of the year.

Wintermute was crazy about memes in the second half of the year. Well-known memes with large market capitalizations, including $act, $moondeng, $goat, $pnut, etc., all have traces of WM market making. The craziest ones are meme coins with market capitalizations of several M, such as the recent AI Agent track of the base chain. Many of these tokens had market capitalizations of several M, and WM intervened early, such as $aixbt, which has achieved a high increase today.

Why did the market maker change from providing liquidity to being a banker? Read more

"Market maker" is an ancient role that can be traced back centuries. The concept and practice of market makers originated in traditional stock and bond markets.

Since the 18th century, the earliest stock exchange in human history, the London Stock Exchange, has had market makers buying and selling securities on the exchange, providing quotes for both buyers and sellers and providing liquidity for the exchange.

The main tasks of a market maker

Provide two-way quotes
Bid and Ask prices: Both Bid and Ask prices are provided on the trading platform
Maintaining the spread: Profits are made by controlling the bid-ask spread, which is also the cost of providing liquidity.

Managing the Order Book
Order Depth: Place buy and sell orders at different prices to increase market depth and liquidity.
Dynamic adjustment: adjust order position and quantity according to market changes to ensure rapid response to market dynamics

Order Book Composition
Bid: The price the buyer is willing to pay, arranged in descending order of price.
Ask: The price the seller is willing to accept, arranged in ascending order of price.
Price spread: The difference between the highest bid price and the lowest ask price. The smaller the spread, the better the market liquidity and the smoother the transaction.

Situations where market makers may lose money

Severe market fluctuations: Prices change rapidly, causing quotations to lose their advantage.

Liquidity Drain: The inability to trade at expected prices during high volatility events.

Information asymmetry: The counterparty has inside information and the market maker suffers losses passively.

Counterparty default: If the counterparty fails to perform its obligations, you may suffer losses even if the direction is correct.
For example, when $LUNA crashed, many market makers were hit hard

Market makers have evolved from over-the-counter trading in the 19th century to AI-based automated trading in the 21st century, and now to Crypto. Market makers are like the Flying Dutchman, hiding in a corner of the crypto world, appearing and disappearing mysteriously. They appear wherever there is a demand for funds.

Crypto’s main market makers: Wintermute, GSR Markets, Auros Global, B2C2 Group and Cumberland DRW

These institutions hold a total of more than $120 million worth of MEME coins. Among them, Wintermute is the institution with the largest holdings and the most popular projects. Many of its MEME coins have been successfully listed on Binance.

Compared with other market makers, WM's strategy in the second half of the year was very successful.

GSR Markets: Mainly holds NEIRO tokens, with a holding volume of 48.51 million and a market value of more than US$5.08 million

Auros Global: MEME coin holdings are relatively small, with a total value of about $330,000 in MEME coins, mainly concentrated in PEPE, NEIRO and SHIB

B2C2 Group: Focus on $shib holdings, valued at nearly $7 million

Cumberland DRW: $pepe $shib holdings worth less than $300,000

Wintermute: Of the 19 MEME coins held, 13 projects have been successfully listed on Binance, accounting for as high as 68.4%. The agency seems to have become a weathervane for MEME coins to be listed on Binance

There is another market maker that must be mentioned: Gobit, but why is it not listed? Read on

In the Sol meme market at the end of 2023, Gobit’s wealth effect is no worse than WM

Gotbit is a hedge fund that specializes in helping tokens achieve market value growth. It has two main business segments: market making and venture capital. Gotbit manages $1.3 billion in assets and has more than 400 institutional clients.

At the end of 2022, Gobit market maker $bonk became famous

At the end of 2023, during the Solana reversal meme craze, Gotbit’s market-making ANALOS created a wealth myth of 3,700 times in a week, and Gotbit once became the wealth code of meme players.

As of last year, Gotbit has publicly collaborated with more than 50 projects, more than 90% of which are meme projects, and most of them are memes on the Solana chain.

As the saying goes, if you walk by the river, you will get your feet wet. Gobit was stung by the FBI

In two cases, Gotbit was involved in an investigation document provided by an FBI agent, in which it exaggerated the trading volume of crypto companies, manipulated crypto trading prices to induce purchases to drive up crypto prices, and then sold them at high prices to make profits.

In September 2023, the on-chain detective ZachXBT also shared a document on the X platform that revealed Gotbit’s market-making strategy.

- Gotbit will push the token price up to 10x in the first few minutes of the price discovery phase to create FOMO, attract as much buying power as possible, and then sell all the tokens in the subsequent peak;
- During the first 12 trading hours, Gotbit aims to exploit existing arbitrage opportunities and will focus on making quick and substantial profits;
- On the launch day, Gotbit's target trading volume is more than 50 million US dollars, and most of the transactions are generated on CEX for free through the generation system;
- Gotbit is committed to achieving a 20x peak after the token opens, and a 25x peak within the first month of trading.

Currently, Gotbit's CEO Aleksei Andriunin has been arrested in Portugal, and two Gotbit employees in Russia have also been indicted.

Summarize
Who are the bankers? Behind the scenes of the crypto market, perhaps it is these hidden market makers who dominate the flow of funds and market sentiment, driving the Meme coin from a niche to the mainstream craze

Next article: How to track the on-chain positions of market makers