Wintermute’s 10 Million USDC Credit Line on Atlendis (2022): Institutional Borrowing Without Collateral

In July 2022, a few weeks after the collapse of several centralized crypto lenders, market maker Wintermute opened an uncollateralized borrower pool on Atlendis. It was one of the best-known institutional names to borrow on a DeFi credit protocol at the time.

The deal

• Announced: 14 July 2022.
• Borrower: Wintermute, a global algorithmic market maker in digital assets.
• Credit rating on Atlendis: AA, making it the first AA-rated borrower on the protocol.
• Initial credit limit: 10 million USDC, as a revolving line of credit.
• Lender incentive: Wintermute paid liquidity rewards on its pool while the credit line was not drawn.

Why it was pitched as a post-crash product

Mid-2022 was when several centralized lenders froze withdrawals. Both sides framed the pool as a more transparent alternative: lenders could see exactly which institution they were lending to, at which rate, on-chain, instead of trusting a centralized intermediary with their deposits.

What happened two months later

On 20 September 2022, Wintermute was hacked and lost about $160 million from its DeFi operations. The company said its centralized and OTC operations were not affected and that it remained solvent, with roughly twice the stolen amount in equity. Public sources do not show how the incident affected its Atlendis credit line.

The lesson for lenders

An AA rating describes a borrower’s creditworthiness, not its operational security. The Wintermute episode shows the specific risk of uncollateralized lending: when there is no collateral, lenders depend on the borrower surviving events that have nothing to do with the loan itself. Diversifying across borrowers and sizing positions accordingly was, and still is, the main protection.

Sources

• Decrypt: Algorithmic market maker Wintermute hacked for $160M (20 September 2022)
• DefiLlama: Atlendis protocol page