GSR

GSR was making markets in crypto in 2013, when most of the institutional plumbing the business now relies on did not yet exist. That head start, more than a decade as a principal liquidity provider, is the firm's real moat.

Founded by Cristian Gil, Rich Rosenblum, and Alexis Sirkia, GSR trades its own capital as counterparty across dozens of exchanges and on-chain protocols, bridging centralized and decentralized liquidity in a way pure exchange HFT shops do not. It runs OTC desks for institutions, seeds DeFi pools, manages token treasuries, and invests at venture stage in hundreds of protocols. London runs operations while a Singapore entity handles regulated Asian business, and recent acquisitions have pushed the firm into digital asset advisory beyond pure trading.