We were all set up by Wintermute from the very beginning of 2026.

In addition, from  2025 year 9 Month's SOL plummeted to earlier 2023 Year Year The governance proposal controversy surrounding Finance has repeatedly embroiled this leading market maker in accusations of "pump and dump." Regarding the accusations of market manipulation, Finance and its supporters hold diametrically opposed positions. The core point of contention lies in how to precisely define the line between "legitimate market making" and "malicious manipulation." Critics argue that market makers deliberately inject spot goods during periods of low liquidity, intending to artificially create selling pressure and precisely trigger stop-loss orders for retail investors' long positions. Leveraging their deep partnerships with major exchanges and their insight into market microstructure, market makers can easily create volatility during periods of low liquidity by placing large orders, thereby profiting from market manipulation. However, Wintermute CEO Evgeny Gaevoy dismissed this as a "conspiracy theory." In an interview, he emphasized that the current market structure is vastly different from that of 2022, when Three Arrows Capital and Alameda went bankrupt. The current market system boasts greater transparency and a more robust risk isolation mechanism, with institutional fund allocation primarily aimed at adjusting inventory or hedging risks. Gaevoy stated that when there is a severe imbalance between buy and sell orders on exchanges, market makers must maintain liquidity supply by transferring positions. While this may objectively amplify short-term volatility, their subjective intention is certainly not to profit from market manipulation. In fact, the controversy has lingered because the crypto market lacks a universally accepted standard for adjudication. In traditional securities markets, using financial advantages to place false orders or deliberately manipulate prices is a clear criminal offense; however, in the 24/7, highly algorithmic world of cryptocurrencies, how can one prove whether large institutional transfers are for market intervention or arbitrage? The lack of this dimension of judgment leaves leading market makers constantly caught in the crossfire of public opinion—both seen as the cornerstone of market liquidity and widely recognized as an undeniable "invisible hand." Exchanges and some industry analysts tend to believe that market makers are a "necessary evil" in the market ecosystem. Without these leading players providing two-sided quotes, cryptocurrency volatility could spiral out of control, potentially triggering a systemic slippage disaster. However, from the perspective of ordinary investors, institutions possess overwhelming advantages in terms of capital, algorithms, and information. In an environment lacking rigid rules, this advantage could easily become a tool for illicit profit-seeking. The "Cyber ​​Prisoner's Dilemma" Fostered by Transparency Beyond analyzing the micro-operations of the crypto world, this year-end turmoil has actually exposed a long-standing, almost paradoxical contradiction: the absolute transparency we strive for is increasingly becoming a weakness in institutional games and a source of market noise. In traditional finance, the position adjustments, inventory management, and internal fund transfers of institutions like BlackRock or Goldman Sachs are virtually impossible for outsiders to discern in their micro-level transactions unless they appear in quarterly reports or regulatory disclosures. But in the world of blockchain, the privacy barrier disappears. The fundamental nature of blockchain is openness and immutability, designed to prevent fraud and promote decentralization. However, as we've seen, every inflow and outflow of BlackRock ETF-related addresses, and every transfer from Windonute to Binance's hot wallet, is like a public performance in a transparent glass enclosure. The fact that institutional giants must accept is that every move they make is analyzed by monitoring tools into highly directional "market crash warnings" or "position building signals." Does this transparency truly bring fairness? The crypto world has always touted "equality before data," but in reality, this extreme transparency has actually fueled more misinterpretations and collective panic. For retail investors, the matching engines and order placement logic within CEXs are difficult to discern; they often can only infer results from on-chain traces. It is precisely because of this information asymmetry that any anomaly on the chain can be interpreted as a conspiracy theory, further exacerbating irrational market volatility. Conclusion When everyone in the market is focused on BlackRock and the wallet addresses of Windtermute, what we are trading may no longer be the value of Bitcoin itself, but rather suspicion and emotion. Information asymmetry is dead, but cognitive asymmetry is eternal. For investors, although market risk isolation is now more mature, and there are no longer chain reactions of defaults, the feeling of powerlessness of "seeing the data but not the truth" seems to have never disappeared. In the deep waters of the crypto game, only by establishing an independent cognitive system that penetrates surface fluctuations can one find a sense of certainty.