Author: momo, ChainCatcher
Since this year, the established crypto market maker GSR has been quite active.
Recently, GSR announced the acquisition of the SEC registered broker-dealer Equilibrium Capital Services and has renamed it to GSR Securities. This means that GSR has obtained a license for a FINRA regulated broker-dealer license, allowing it to participate in the trading and brokerage of securities-type digital assets within a compliant framework in the United States.
Prior to this, it had already completed several key arrangements: in March, it acquired two token consulting companies, in April it jointly launched a crypto ETF on NASDAQ, and invested in the tokenization platform Libeara, and in May, it introduced a strategic investment from SC Ventures under Standard Chartered Bank.
What is GSR’s intensive activity really about? What collective actions are other crypto market makers taking?
From Crypto Market Making to “Web3 Investment Bank”
As early as 2025 , GSR CEO Xin Song positioned the company as“a crypto capital market platform”, and repeatedly mentioned its evolution toward“Web3 investment bank”.
He also mentioned the motivations for the transformation. In his view, the issues of crypto projects have never been solely about a single link, but rather the entire chain is fragmented — for example, from token design, financing, listing, to liquidity arrangements, requiring separate connections with different organizations, and the goals of these organizations are not aligned, leading to high collaboration costs. Therefore, they prefer to consolidate as many services around the token lifecycle into one system as possible.
In line with this direction, since last year or even earlier, GSR has been continuously enhancing its capabilities through licenses, acquisitions, and investments.
In early 2025, GSR obtained registration qualifications from the UK FCA, entering a regulated system. Subsequently, it acquired the US FINRA registered broker-dealer Equilibrium Capital Services, and after completing regulatory approval this year, it has been renamed GSR Securities. This change is not just about acquiring a compliant identity, but also equips it with the ability to interface with traditional capital markets.
Beyond licenses, GSR is also beginning to move its services earlier into the issuance phase.
In March of this year, it acquired Autonomous and Architech for $57 million, the former focusing on foundation operations and financing coordination, while the latter focuses on token economics design and liquidity strategies.
After the merger, the entire chain from token design, financing, to listing and market making has started to be integrated. In the past, these links were often dispersed among different organizations, but are now gradually being consolidated into the same service system.
However, the more important change is that the services are starting to extend from“how to issue tokens” to“how to manage assets”.
GSR mentioned in public interviews that many foundations and protocols hold a large amount of their own tokens in the early stages, but do not have a mature financial system to manage these assets, resulting in high concentration, great volatility, and difficulty in forming a stable source of funds. Therefore, they are also gradually expanding into asset management.
In addition to helping crypto companies build crypto treasuries last year, this year GSR has also started launching ETF funds.
In April of this year, GSR launched its first ETF, the GSR Crypto Core3 ETF, which includes Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana in a unified portfolio and generates income through staking mechanisms.
At the same time, GSR is also betting on tokenization.
This year, it invested in Libeara, a platform incubated by Standard Chartered's SC Ventures , which has supported over $1 billion of on-chain asset issuance and holds relevant licenses from the Singapore MAS. Interestingly, shortly after this, SC Ventures also acquired a stake in GSR, becoming its first external strategic shareholder since its establishment in 2013.
This mutual equity holding has transformed their relationship from business collaboration to capital binding, also enabling GSR to have greater capabilities to connect directly with banking systems, institutional networks, and compliance channels.
In public information, GSR has also mentioned that it has contacted film studios, farmland, real estate, and accounts receivable for tokenization needs.
From licenses and compliance capabilities to consulting, issuance, market making, asset management, and secondary liquidity, GSR is attempting to gradually complete the puzzle of“Web3 investment bank”.
The Collective Change of Crypto Market Makers
GSR is not an isolated example of transformation, but rather a microcosm of the collective changes among crypto market makers.
In the past year, the actions of leading market makers have begun to show obvious convergence. On one side, there is a continuous strengthening of compliance and licensing systems, while on the other side, there is a constant expansion into businesses beyond market making.
For example, Keyrock has been entering the US market and establishing an office in New York while also promoting compliance arrangements under the EU MiCA framework, and has entered the asset management business through the acquisition of a fund management company; B2C2 has obtained MiCA authorization, expanding its business into more complex institutional OTC and stablecoin exchange scenarios. Wintermute has begun to enter new fields such as prediction markets, DeFi treasury curation, and tokenized gold trading while strengthening institutional trading capabilities; DWF Labs is also trying to extend from liquidity provision into real-world asset directions, including gold trading and physical delivery.
Crypto market makers seem to have formed a similar path, first entering mainstream regulatory systems through licenses and regional expansion, then primarily entering the institutional market with OTC and institutional liquidity as core businesses, and gradually extending into asset management, tokenized assets, and more complex financial products.
The underlying driving force is that the crypto market maker industry may be shifting from high profit to high competition and low tolerance.
First of all,“money has become scarcer”. With the decline of altcoins and the bear market, the market-making budgets of projects have significantly decreased. Project parties have become smarter. After experiencing multiple cycles, they have a better understanding of market-making mechanisms and profit margins.
Moreover,“there are too many monks for too little meat”. The number of projects with market-making value has decreased while the number of market makers has increased. As a result, quality liquidity is increasingly concentrated in a few leading teams, while numerous long-tail projects are neither profitable nor have growth potential. Many market makers are effectively competing for limited profits within an increasingly narrow range, making marginal profits very thin.
At the same time, competition is expanding outward. New tracks such as on-chain market making, derivatives, and tokenized assets are continuously emerging, causing the landscape of crypto market makers to undergo differentiation due to the proliferation of tracks, and market makers are being demanded to possess more systematic capabilities.
Perhaps more pressing are the pressures brought by compliance and risk events. As regulations tighten, with the US and EU MiCA framework gradually being implemented, licenses and audits have become basic thresholds instead of just bonus items. Additionally, extreme market events like those on November 11, 2022, will further reinforce a realization: teams without systematic risk control capabilities will be washed out sooner or later.
In summary, the way to make money in the crypto market making business has changed. The role of crypto market makers seems to be evolving from a trading industry reliant on information asymmetry and volatility to an institutionalized industry shaped by compliance, client structure, and asset forms.
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