The CTO of a 'crowdsourced hedge fund' joined trading firm DRW
Decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) are rare in the world of trading, but they do exist. Numerai, a 'crowdsourced' crypto hedge fund that invites any DIY quant to build a trading model, is one such firm, but it just lost its CTO to a firm with a much more singular vision.
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James Elford has joined Don Wilson's DRW Trading as a senior research engineer in its London office, after three years with Numerai. He initially served as the fund's head of trading technology, becoming CTO halfway through his tenure.
Elford's background before Numerai is more typical of an engineer in electronic trading. He was an engineer at high-frequency trading firm Optiver, working on back-office tech in FX options, and was a development lead at London quant fund Aspect Capital.
DRW will likely be a change of pace for Elford, as the fund is thought to revolve around its founder, Wilson. While it made its name as an electronic trading firm, it's now thought to operate almost like a family office, making long-term directional bets in line with Wilson's vision.
Numerai, meanwhile, runs trading model contests, and aggregates the submissions through a team of data scientists to create its own trading models. The closest comparison to its approach that you'll find outside of crypto is WorldQuant's BRAIN platform, which allows consultants to test strategies on a simulated trading environment.
Numerai pays users based on the quality of their submissions, but they can stake their own money on their models too via its own cryptocurrency, NMR. One user has staked the equivalent of $855k on the platform, and achieved returns of 106% in the past year.
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