Author: flowie, ChainCatcher

This year, established cryptocurrency market maker GSR has been making frequent moves.

Recently, GSR announced the completion of its acquisition of SEC-registered brokerage firm Equilibrium Capital Services, renaming it GSRSecurities. This means that GSR has obtained a broker-dealer license regulated by FINRA, enabling it to participate in the trading and brokerage of securities-related digital assets within the US compliance framework.

Prior to this, it had already completed several key strategic moves: in March, it acquired two token consulting firms; in April, it jointly launched a crypto ETF on Nasdaq and invested in the tokenization platform Libera; and in May, it introduced strategic investment from Standard Chartered's SC Ventures.

What strategy is GSR employing behind its flurry of activity? And what collective actions are other crypto market makers taking?

From Crypto Market Making to "Web3 Investment Banking"

Back in 2025, GSR CEO Xin Song positioned the company as a "crypto capital market platform" and repeatedly mentioned its evolution towards becoming a "Web3 investment bank".

He also mentioned the motivation behind the transformation. In his view, the problem with crypto projects is never just a single link, but rather that the entire chain is fragmented. For example, from token design, financing, and listing to liquidity arrangements, different institutions need to be contacted separately, and the goals of these institutions are not aligned, resulting in high coordination costs. Therefore, what they hope to do is to consolidate the services surrounding the token lifecycle into a single system as much as possible.

In line with this direction, GSR has been continuously improving its capabilities through licensing, acquisitions and investments since last year or even earlier.

In early 2025, GSR obtained registration with the UK's FCA, entering the regulated system. Subsequently, it acquired Equilibrium Capital Services, a FINRA-registered broker-dealer in the US, and changed its name to GSR Securities after completing regulatory approvals this year. This change is not merely about gaining a compliance status; it gives it the interface to access traditional capital markets.

In addition to licensing, GSR has also begun to move its services to earlier issuance stages.

In March of this year, it acquired Autonomous and Architech for $57 million. The former focuses on foundation operations and financing coordination, while the latter focuses on token economic design and liquidity strategies.

After the merger, the entire process of token design, financing, listing, and market making began to be streamlined. In the past, these steps were often scattered among different institutions, but now they are gradually being integrated into a single service system.

But the more important change is that the services have begun to extend from "how to issue tokens" to "how to manage assets".

In a public interview, GSR mentioned that many foundations and protocols hold a large amount of their own tokens in their early stages, but lack a mature financial system to manage these assets. As a result, assets are highly concentrated, extremely volatile, and it is difficult to form a stable source of funds. Therefore, they are gradually expanding into asset management.

In addition to helping crypto companies build crypto treasuries last year, GSR has also started launching ETF funds this year.

In April of this year, GSR launched its first ETF, the GSR Crypto Core3 ETF, which incorporates Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana into a unified portfolio and generates returns through a staking mechanism.

At the same time, GSR is also betting on tokenization.

This year, it invested in Libera, a platform incubated by Standard Chartered Bank's SC Ventures. This platform has already supported the issuance of over $1 billion in on-chain assets and possesses the relevant licenses from Singapore's MAS. Interestingly, shortly afterward, SC Ventures also made a reverse takeover of GSR, becoming its first external strategic shareholder since its founding in 2013.

This dual shareholding arrangement transforms the relationship between the two parties from business cooperation into a capital bond, and also gives GSR the ability to connect more directly with the banking system, institutional networks, and compliance channels.

In its public information, GSR also mentioned that it has approached various asset tokenization needs, including film studios, farmland, real estate, and accounts receivable.

From licensing and compliance capabilities to consulting, issuance, market making, asset management, and secondary market liquidity, GSR is attempting to gradually complete the puzzle of a "web3 investment bank".

The collective need for change among crypto market makers

GSR is not an isolated case of transformation, but rather a microcosm of the collective transformation efforts of crypto market makers.

Over the past year, the actions of leading market makers have begun to show a clear convergence: on the one hand, they continue to strengthen compliance and licensing systems, and on the other hand, they are constantly expanding into businesses beyond market making.

For example, Keyrock, while entering the US market and establishing a New York office, is also advancing its compliance strategy under the EU's MiCA framework and entering the asset management business through the acquisition of a fund management company; B2C2 has obtained MiCA authorization, expanding its business to more complex institutional OTC and stablecoin exchange scenarios. Wintermute, in addition to strengthening its institutional trading capabilities, has begun to enter new areas such as prediction markets, DeFi vault curation, and tokenized gold trading; DWF Labs is also trying to extend from liquidity provision to real-world assets, including gold trading and physical delivery.

Crypto market makers appear to have followed a similar path: first, they enter the mainstream regulatory system through licensing and geographical expansion; then, they enter the institutional market with OTC and institutional liquidity as their core businesses; and finally, they gradually extend to asset management, tokenized assets, and more complex financial products.

The underlying driving force may be that the crypto market maker industry is shifting from high profits to high competition and low fault tolerance.

First, "there's less money." With the decline of altcoins and the bear market, projects' market-making budgets have decreased significantly. Project teams themselves have also become smarter. After experiencing multiple cycles, they have a better understanding of market-making mechanisms and profit margins.

Moreover, there's a "too many monks, too little meat" situation—fewer projects have market-making value, while the number of market makers has increased. As a result, high-quality liquidity is increasingly concentrated in the hands of a few top teams, while a large number of long-tail projects neither generate profit nor have growth potential. Many market makers are essentially competing for limited profits in an increasingly narrow range, with their profit margins being squeezed very thin.

Meanwhile, competition is expanding outwards. New sectors such as on-chain market making, derivatives, and tokenized assets are constantly emerging, causing the landscape of crypto market makers to begin to differentiate due to the increasing number of sectors, and requiring market makers to have more systematic capabilities.

Even more difficult to ignore is the pressure from compliance and risk events. Regulation is tightening rapidly. With the gradual implementation of the MiCA system in the US and EU, licenses and audits have become basic requirements, not bonuses. Coupled with extreme market conditions like those of October 11th last year, this directly reinforces the perception that teams lacking systematic risk control capabilities will inevitably be eliminated sooner or later.

In general, the way crypto market makers make money has changed. The role of crypto market makers seems to be transforming from a trading industry that relies on information asymmetry and volatility into an institutionalized industry that is being reshaped by compliance, client structure, and asset types.

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