DeFi Visions: Yoann Turpin

In DeFi Visions, a series of video interviews, the 1inch Network talks to the most prominent people in the DeFi space. The following post offers key takeaways from a recent interview with Yoann Turpin, co-founder and Head of Business Development at Wintermute.

Yoann launched Wintermute back in 2017 with a co-founder, Evgeny Gaevoy. Since then, the startup has grown to become a leading market maker, cooperating with crypto exchanges and aggregators to provide liquidity.

According to Yoann, one of the main focuses of the future expansion should be on DeFi. “Today, $18 bln of our $20 bln trading volume is in CeFi, one in OTC, and only one is purely in DeFi,” he says. “But we are getting ready to see tons of volume happening in this financial ecosystem and pushing to be more present there. So, we are covering nine chains and 40 protocols now.”

Yoann says he believes in the success of the BeBop DEX aggregator, unveiled after being incubated at Wintermute. “It’s gonna be a place where people have more real-time prices in a chain. This project is a mix of Request for Quote (RFQ) and aggregation,” he elaborates.

Yoann considers DeFi ecosystems to be one of the most promising areas for investing as the space has experienced incredible growth lately.

“We are actively investing in DeFi, concentrating 60% of the investments in tokens,” he says. “We take money from trading while building infrastructure with the end purpose of making markets more efficient.”

Commenting on the prospects of L1 and L2, Yoann says that they’ve been initially focused on L2. “Being perfect for trading and scalable solutions, L2 is a place where everything is happening, from bridges to zero-knowledge proof,” he adjusts.

According to Yoann, ZK-rollups and Optimistic Rollups are promising tools that reduce centralization risks on bridges and facilitate a simple migration between the layers.

A bear market, Yoann observes, is never pleasant because it always brings certain difficulties for various market participants, but an unbiased perspective can also lead to optimistic takeaways. “The bear market makes it hard to raise funds, but the silver lining is that you get fewer scams and receive better quality from the teams who are building the space,” he explains. “The reason lies in less distraction accompanied by the bearish cycle.”

Since market downturns do not have a strong impact on his company, Yoann says he remains confident about the future.

“We are in a good position because of having a runway for the next 50 years, so we can stand that,” he says. “Plus, the reason we are not getting impacted by market shocks is that we don’t make money when coins go up and down.”

Speaking about the Terra/Luna collapse’s ramifications, Yoann notes that the market “is still going through liquidation phases.”

A major difference with the crash emerging lately, Yoann says, is that the companies feeling the impact are also the ones doing the investing. “Some venture firms lost a good amount of money,” he adds.

Regardless of whether some market players may or may not feel the frost, Yoann suggests a crypto winter might occur soon. “The space could approach crypto winter in three-four years followed by a strong rebalancing,” he says, noting that diversification of portfolios could be a backup option when preparing for this period.

Meanwhile, Yoann comes up with a list of crypto winter silver linings, which include some pros for small projects.

“As it’s hard to raise funds, you can secure funds,” he observes. “Also, you will get better access to talents while many good teams will be fired.”

Small projects can replace midsection companies, Yoann says, as medium players may have trouble because of increasing fluidity.

“Crypto winter means a nice market reshuffling, which creates chances for everyone,” he concludes.

Watch the full interview with Yoann Turpin on the 1inch Network’s YouTube channel.