Wintermute CEO Evgeny Gaevoy has publicly denied one of the loudest and most persistent rumors that has been circulating since the October 10 liquidation shock – that the cryptocurrency market-making firm is preparing to sue Binance.
Posting on X this week, Gaevoy reiterated that Wintermute “never had plans to sue Binance,” and said nothing about the firm’s position has changed since his statements immediately after the event.
Wintermute-Binance Lawsuit Rumor
The denial follows multiple posts from pseudonymous market commentators alleging Wintermute was pursuing reimbursement over losses tied to Binance’s Auto-Deleveraging (ADL) mechanism during the crash. Gaevoy directly responded to one such post, and the claim was nothing but a “baseless rumor.”
The October event, which has been described by trading desks as the largest 24-hour liquidation in crypto history, triggered extensive debate around the role of large market makers during forced unwinding moments. Binance later disclosed compensation and support measures of $283 million in reimbursements, as well as a $400 million recovery initiative for users and institutional desks. But Wintermute has not confirmed whether it received any compensation from the exchange. On October 12, Gaevoy stated publicly that the firm was “perfectly fine” following the event.
While rumors of a potential legal confrontation continued to gain traction over the past week, a separate but highly viral narrative also circulated, which suggested that Binance and Wintermute jointly profited from the liquidation cycle.
Those claims, which are unsupported by public evidence, alleged that Binance regularly transfers large volumes of assets to Wintermute before major sell-offs, and that Wintermute then drives markets lower to capture the spread. The claims also cited Wintermute’s large inbound transfer to Binance hours before the October 10 price drop, a detail that was reported as routine liquidity rebalancing at the time.
CZ Pushes Back
Despite the intensity of speculation across social platforms, neither Binance nor Wintermute has hinted at the existence of legal conflict or internal breakdown.
Binance has not commented directly on the Wintermute lawsuit rumor, but the exchange previously stated there was no preferential treatment or internal execution error behind the October ADL triggers, and had added that the event was driven by extreme open interest that had built up in the weeks prior.
The exchange’s founder and former CEO, CZ, however, tweeted,
“If someone made you believe otherwise, it’s time to click unfollow.”