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DRW
Founded	1992
Headquarters	Chicago, Illinois, United States
Key People	Donald R. Wilson, Jr., Founder and Chief Executive Officer; Joseph Hable, General Counsel; Jennifer Wilson, Partner, Risk Management; Jeffrey Levoff, Partner
Employees	~1,600
Products	Proprietary trading, market making, electronic trading, real estate investment, venture capital, cryptocurrencies trading, energy trading, carbon solutions
Twitter	@@DRWTrading
LinkedIn	Profile
Facebook	Page
Website	www.drw.com

DRW, formally known as DRW Holdings, LLC, is a diversified principal trading firm headquartered in Chicago, Illinois, that trades its own capital across a broad range of asset classes, instruments, and strategies in financial markets around the world. The firm was founded in 1992 by Donald R. Wilson, Jr. while he was trading Eurodollar options in the pit at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME), and it derives its name from his initials.

DRW's principal businesses span proprietary trading and market making across futures, options, swaps, fixed income, equities, exchange-traded funds, foreign exchange, commodities, energy, and cryptocurrencies. The firm also operates several subsidiaries, including Cumberland, one of the world's largest liquidity providers in cryptoassets; DRW Venture Capital (DRWVC), which invests in financial and enterprise technology companies; Convexity Properties, a real estate investment arm; DRW Energy Trading, focused on North American power, natural gas, and emissions markets; Artemeter, which provides carbon financing solutions; and NX, a proprietary telecommunications network. DRW maintains offices in Amsterdam, Austin, Greenwich, Houston, London, Montreal, New York, Singapore, and Tel Aviv, in addition to its Chicago headquarters, and employs approximately 1,600 people worldwide.

History

Origins and early years

Donald R. Wilson, Jr. entered the trading industry in 1989, beginning his career on the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. He held a Bachelor of Arts in economics from the University of Chicago and combined skills in mathematics, programming, and trading to develop a quantitative approach to derivatives markets that was uncommon among floor traders at the time.​ In 1992, while trading Eurodollar options in the CME pit, Wilson founded DRW as a proprietary trading firm, building the business on his conviction that quantitative modeling was an underutilized tool for identifying and measuring opportunities in global financial markets.

After establishing the firm in Chicago, Wilson opened an office in London in 1994, trading on the London International Financial Futures and Options Exchange (LIFFE) through 1996. He then returned to Chicago to build DRW into a multi-asset class trading operation. During the late 1990s and early 2000s, as markets migrated from open outcry to electronic trading, DRW expanded its presence to more than 30 exchanges around the world, including CME Group, Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), Eurex, and the Chicago Board Options Exchange (CBOE).

Technology and electronic trading transition

The transition from pit trading to electronic platforms required DRW to invest heavily in technology. The firm became an early adopter of automated trading strategies, including latency-sensitive trading, deploying sophisticated algorithms and quantitative models to execute trades across multiple asset classes and exchanges. By 2016, DRW's technology division had created and supported over 20 open source software projects. DRW was mentioned in Michael Lewis's 2014 book Flash Boys, which described how several trading firms competed with each other to establish infrastructure allowing trading advantages at the sub-nanosecond level, a practice known as latency arbitrage. Wilson publicly contested the characterization of proprietary trading firms portrayed in the book, arguing that it presented a caricature that unfairly painted all high-frequency traders as predatory. ​ In 2013, DRW acquired Vigilant Global, a Canadian telecommunications company based in Montreal, which strengthened the firm's proprietary network infrastructure. The firm later established NX, a dedicated subsidiary responsible for designing, building, and operating one of the most sophisticated proprietary telecommunications networks in the trading industry, providing low-latency connectivity to exchanges and data centers globally.

Lehman Brothers portfolio acquisition

In September 2008, during the collapse of investment bank Lehman Brothers, CME Group organized an emergency auction of Lehman's derivatives positions to maintain market stability. DRW was the only non-bank participant invited to the auction, alongside Barclays, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, and Citadel. DRW submitted the winning bid for Lehman's foreign exchange, interest rate derivatives, and agricultural derivatives portfolios. The acquisition was DRW's first major appearance on the global stage and demonstrated the firm's capacity to rapidly assess and manage large, complex portfolios of derivatives positions. A subsequent court-appointed examiner's report revealed that Lehman incurred a total loss of $1.2 billion from the auction, and all successful bidders acquired their respective portfolio segments at a profit.

Acquisitions and consolidation

DRW pursued a series of acquisitions beginning in the mid-2010s that expanded the firm's scale and capabilities. In January 2015, DRW acquired the assets of Chopper Trading LLC, a Chicago-based proprietary trading firm specializing in fixed income. Wilson described Chopper as a "highly-respected and successful participant in the industry" with "trading strategies that are complementary to DRW's." The deal was part of a broader wave of consolidation among high-frequency and proprietary trading firms, driven by rising fixed costs, declining profitability, and persistently low market volatility.

In August 2017, DRW agreed to acquire RGM Advisors LLC, a Texas-based proprietary trading firm founded in 2001 that specialized in machine learning and big data analytics for futures and equities markets. RGM had generated approximately $800 million in trading profits over its lifetime but had been losing money in 2017 as volatility declined. The acquisition bolstered DRW's capabilities in equities trading, research, and technology infrastructure. ​

Expansion into energy trading

In November 2017, DRW opened a Houston office staffed initially by 10 employees focused on energy trading. The trading desk was formerly part of Martin Energy Trading, a subsidiary of Martin Resource Management Corp. The firm later broadened its energy operations through the entity DRW Energy Trading LLC, which focuses on North American power, natural gas, and emissions markets. DRW Energy Trading became a member of the North American Energy Markets Association (NAEMA) in 2023. In 2025, DRW Energy Trading made a strategic equity investment in Catalyst Power Parent LLC, an independent provider of retail energy and cleaner energy solutions for the commercial and industrial sector.

Eris Innovations and swap futures

In 2010, DRW served as a founding partner in the Eris Futures Exchange, an alternative exchange that offered listed interest rate swap futures contracts. Donald R. Wilson, Jr. is the co-inventor of the intellectual property used in the exchange's swap futures contracts, which provide straightforward access to trading swap risk in a capital-efficient futures form. The intellectual property was later held by Eris Innovations LLC. When the swap futures contracts migrated to CME Group in 2018, Eris Innovations continued as a product development and IP licensing company. Eris SOFR Swap Futures, listed and cleared at CME Group, became eligible for portfolio margining with interest rate swaps in 2023, reducing the cost of holding positions against offsetting rates swaps by an estimated 85 to 95 percent. In 2023, Eris Innovations closed a $7.2 million funding round with investors including DRW, DV Trading, Virtu Financial, ARB Trading, and Arclight Securities.

Cryptocurrency and blockchain ventures

DRW's entry into cryptocurrencies began with a bitcoin trading operation run through a subsidiary originally known as Cumberland Mining & Materials. In 2014, Wilson launched Cumberland as a dedicated cryptoasset liquidity provider, making it one of the earliest institutional participants in bitcoin and other digital asset markets. Cumberland traded more than $20 billion worth of bitcoin, ethereum, and other cryptocurrencies in 2017.

That same year, 2014, Wilson co-founded Digital Asset Holdings, a company that uses blockchain (or distributed ledger) technology to address inefficiencies and risks in the clearing, settlement, and post-trade processing of financial transactions. In April 2015, Digital Asset hired former JPMorgan global commodities executive Blythe Masters as chief executive officer. Digital Asset developed DAML, a smart contract programming language, and launched the Canton Network, a public, permissionless Layer-1 blockchain designed for institutional-grade compliance and privacy. In 2025, Digital Asset raised $135 million in a funding round led by DRW Venture Capital and Tradeweb Markets, with participation from BNP Paribas, Circle Ventures, Citadel Securities, the Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation, Goldman Sachs, and others.

In 2018, Wilson co-founded ErisX, a U.S.-based digital asset exchange offering both spot and futures contracts on a single platform with a regulated clearinghouse, building upon the regulatory and technology framework developed through Eris Exchange. In October 2021, Cboe Global Markets (CBOE) announced its agreement to acquire ErisX, and the deal closed in May 2022, with the entity rebranded as Cboe Digital.

Real estate, venture capital, and carbon initiatives

DRW began investing in real estate in 2009, taking advantage of distressed property opportunities following the financial crisis, and later established Convexity Properties as a full-service real estate investment arm. Convexity's portfolio includes hotels, student housing, high-end retail, and mixed-use developments throughout the United States. Notable projects include the restoration of the Three Arts Club building in Chicago, which won the 2016 Chicago Landmark Award for Preservation Excellence, and an equity partnership with Riverside Investment and Development on 320 South Canal, a 50-story office tower in Chicago. In 2025, Convexity acquired a Gold Coast site in Chicago for $39 million.

DRW Venture Capital (DRWVC) was established in 2011 to invest in private companies focused on financial and enterprise technology. The portfolio has included investments in companies such as BitGo, TradingView, OpenFin, Crusoe, Talos, Droit, and others. The venture capital arm is headed by Kimberly Trautmann.

In 2020, Wilson partnered with Michael Greenstone, a carbon economist at the University of Chicago, and others to co-found Climate Vault, a non-profit organization that uses compliance cap-and-trade carbon markets to offset carbon emissions. Using Climate Vault, DRW became the first carbon-neutral trading firm in 2020, a commitment the firm has renewed each year since. In connection with its carbon and environmental initiatives, DRW later established Artemeter, a subsidiary that provides full-service carbon financing solutions and partners with clients to achieve decarbonization goals. ​

Philanthropy

In August 2012, DRW provided start-up funding through the DRW Trading Group Foundation for DRW College Prep, a four-year public charter high school in the Homan Square neighborhood of Chicago, operated as part of the Noble Network of Charter Schools. DRW team members provide coaching, tutoring, and mentoring for students, and serve on Noble's Board of Directors. The school's first class graduated in 2016, with 100 percent of graduating seniors accepted into college.

DRW
Founded	1992
Headquarters	Chicago, Illinois, United States
Key People	Donald R. Wilson Jr., Founder and Chief Executive Officer; Craig Saltzman, Chief Financial Officer; Joseph Hable, General Counsel; Jennifer Wilson, Partner, Risk Management; Jeffrey Levoff, Partner
Employees	~1,600
Products	Proprietary trading, market making, electronic trading, real estate investment, venture capital, cryptocurrencies trading, energy trading, carbon solutions
Twitter	@@DRWTrading
LinkedIn	Profile
Facebook	Page
Website	https://www.drw.com

DRW, formally known as DRW Holdings, LLC, is a diversified principal trading firm headquartered in Chicago, Illinois, that trades its own capital across a broad range of asset classes, instruments, and strategies in financial markets around the world. The firm was founded in 1992 by Donald R. Wilson Jr. while he was trading Eurodollar options in the pit at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME), and it derives its name from his initials.

DRW's principal businesses span proprietary trading and market making across futures, options, swaps, fixed income, equities, exchange-traded funds, foreign exchange, commodities, energy, and cryptocurrencies. The firm also operates several subsidiaries, including Cumberland, one of the world's largest liquidity providers in cryptoassets; DRW Venture Capital (DRWVC), which invests in financial and enterprise technology companies; Convexity Properties, a real estate investment arm; DRW Energy Trading, focused on North American power, natural gas, and emissions markets; Artemeter, which provides carbon financing solutions; and NX, a proprietary telecommunications network.

DRW maintains offices in Amsterdam, Austin, Greenwich, Houston, London, Montreal, New York, Singapore, and Tel Aviv, in addition to its Chicago headquarters, and employs approximately 1,600 people worldwide.

History

Origins and early years

Donald R. Wilson Jr. entered the trading industry in 1989, beginning his career on the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. ​ He held a bachelor of arts degree in economics from the University of Chicago, and he combined skills in mathematics, programming, and trading to develop a quantitative approach to derivatives markets that was uncommon among floor traders at the time. ​ In 1992, while trading Eurodollar options in the CME pit, Wilson founded DRW as a proprietary trading firm, building the business on his conviction that quantitative modeling was an underutilized tool for identifying and measuring opportunities in global financial markets.

After establishing the firm in Chicago, Wilson opened an office in London in 1994, trading on the London International Financial Futures and Options Exchange (LIFFE) through 1996. He then returned to Chicago to build DRW into a multi-asset class trading operation. During the late 1990s and early 2000s, as markets migrated from open outcry to electronic trading, DRW expanded its presence to more than 30 exchanges around the world, including CME Group, Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), Eurex, and the Chicago Board Options Exchange (CBOE). ​

Technology and electronic trading transition

The transition from pit trading to electronic platforms required DRW to invest heavily in technology. The firm became an early adopter of automated trading strategies, including latency-sensitive trading, deploying sophisticated algorithms and quantitative models to execute trades across multiple asset classes and exchanges. By 2016, DRW's technology division had created and supported over 20 open source software projects. DRW was mentioned in Michael Lewis's 2014 book Flash Boys, which described how several trading firms competed with each other to establish infrastructure allowing trading advantages at the sub-nanosecond level, a practice known as latency arbitrage. Wilson publicly contested the characterization of proprietary trading firms portrayed in the book, arguing that it presented a caricature that unfairly painted all high-frequency traders as predatory.

In 2013, DRW acquired Vigilant Global, a Canadian telecommunications company based in Montreal, which strengthened the firm's proprietary network infrastructure. The firm later established NX, a dedicated subsidiary responsible for designing, building, and operating one of the most sophisticated proprietary telecommunications networks in the trading industry, providing low-latency connectivity to exchanges and data centers globally.

Lehman Brothers portfolio acquisition

In September 2008, during the collapse of investment bank Lehman Brothers, CME Group organized an emergency auction of Lehman's derivatives positions to maintain market stability. DRW was the only non-bank participant invited to the auction, alongside Barclays, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, and Citadel. DRW submitted the winning bid for Lehman's foreign exchange, interest rate derivatives, and agricultural derivatives portfolios. The acquisition was DRW's first major appearance on the global stage and demonstrated the firm's capacity to rapidly assess and manage large, complex portfolios of derivatives positions. A subsequent court-appointed examiner's report revealed that Lehman incurred a total loss of $1.2 billion from the auction, and all successful bidders acquired their respective portfolio segments at a profit.

Acquisitions and consolidation

DRW pursued a series of acquisitions beginning in the mid-2010s that expanded the firm's scale and capabilities. In January 2015, DRW acquired the assets of Chopper Trading LLC, a Chicago-based proprietary trading firm specializing in fixed income. Wilson described Chopper as a "highly-respected and successful participant in the industry" with "trading strategies that are complementary to DRW's." ​ The deal was part of a broader wave of consolidation among high-frequency and proprietary trading firms, driven by rising fixed costs, declining profitability, and persistently low market volatility. ​

In August 2017, DRW agreed to acquire RGM Advisors LLC, a Texas-based proprietary trading firm founded in 2001 that specialized in machine learning and big data analytics for futures and equities markets. RGM had generated approximately $800 million in trading profits over its lifetime but had been losing money in 2017 as volatility declined. The acquisition bolstered DRW's capabilities in equities trading, research, and technology infrastructure.

Expansion into energy trading

In November 2017, DRW opened a Houston office staffed initially by 10 employees focused on energy trading. The trading desk was formerly part of Martin Energy Trading, a subsidiary of Martin Resource Management Corp. The firm later broadened its energy operations through the entity DRW Energy Trading LLC, which focuses on North American power, natural gas, and emissions markets. DRW Energy Trading became a member of the North American Energy Markets Association (NAEMA) in 2023. In 2025, DRW Energy Trading made a strategic equity investment in Catalyst Power Parent LLC, an independent provider of retail energy and cleaner energy solutions for the commercial and industrial sector.

Eris Innovations and swap futures

In 2010, DRW served as a founding partner in the Eris Futures Exchange, an alternative exchange that offered listed interest rate swap futures contracts. Donald R. Wilson Jr. is the co-inventor of the intellectual property used in the exchange's swap futures contracts, which provide straightforward access to trading swap risk in a capital-efficient futures form. The intellectual property was later held by Eris Innovations LLC. When the swap futures contracts migrated to CME Group in 2018, Eris Innovations continued as a product development and IP licensing company. Eris SOFR Swap Futures, listed and cleared at CME Group, became eligible for portfolio margining with interest rate swaps in 2023, reducing the cost of holding positions against offsetting rates swaps by an estimated 85 to 95 percent. In 2023, Eris Innovations closed a $7.2 million funding round with investors including DRW, DV Trading, Virtu Financial, ARB Trading, and Arclight Securities.

Cryptocurrency and blockchain ventures

DRW's entry into cryptocurrencies began with a bitcoin trading operation run through a subsidiary originally known as Cumberland Mining & Materials. In 2014, Wilson launched Cumberland as a dedicated cryptoasset liquidity provider, making it one of the earliest institutional participants in bitcoin and other digital asset markets. Cumberland traded more than $20 billion worth of bitcoin, ethereum, and other cryptocurrencies in 2017.

That same year, 2014, Wilson co-founded Digital Asset Holdings, a company that uses blockchain (or distributed ledger) technology to address inefficiencies and risks in the clearing, settlement, and post-trade processing of financial transactions. In April 2015, Digital Asset hired former JPMorgan global commodities executive Blythe Masters as chief executive officer. Digital Asset developed DAML, a smart contract programming language, and launched the Canton Network, a public, permissionless Layer-1 blockchain designed for institutional-grade compliance and privacy. In 2025, Digital Asset raised $135 million in a funding round led by DRW Venture Capital and Tradeweb Markets, with participation from BNP Paribas, Circle Ventures, Citadel Securities, the Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation, Goldman Sachs, and others.

In 2018, Wilson co-founded ErisX, a U.S.-based digital asset exchange offering both spot and futures contracts on a single platform with a regulated clearinghouse, building upon the regulatory and technology framework developed through Eris Exchange. In October 2021, Cboe Global Markets (CBOE) announced its agreement to acquire ErisX, and the deal closed in May 2022, with the entity rebranded as Cboe Digital.

Real estate, venture capital, and carbon initiatives

DRW began investing in real estate in 2009, taking advantage of distressed property opportunities following the financial crisis, and later established Convexity Properties as a full-service real estate investment arm. Convexity's portfolio includes hotels, student housing, high-end retail, and mixed-use developments throughout the United States. Notable projects include the restoration of the Three Arts Club building in Chicago, which won the 2016 Chicago Landmark Award for Preservation Excellence, and an equity partnership with Riverside Investment and Development on 320 South Canal, a 50-story office tower in Chicago. In 2025, Convexity acquired a Gold Coast site in Chicago for $39 million.

DRW Venture Capital (DRWVC) was established in 2011 to invest in private companies focused on financial and enterprise technology. The portfolio has included investments in companies such as BitGo, TradingView, OpenFin, Crusoe, Talos, Droit, and others. The venture capital arm is headed by Kimberly Trautmann.

In 2020, Wilson partnered with Michael Greenstone, a carbon economist at the University of Chicago, and others to co-found Climate Vault, a non-profit organization that uses compliance cap-and-trade carbon markets to offset carbon emissions. Using Climate Vault, DRW became the first carbon-neutral trading firm in 2020, a commitment the firm has renewed each year since. In connection with its carbon and environmental initiatives, DRW later established Artemeter, a subsidiary that provides full-service carbon financing solutions and partners with clients to achieve decarbonization goals. ​

Philanthropy

In August 2012, DRW provided start-up funding through the DRW Trading Group Foundation for DRW College Prep, a four-year public charter high school in the Homan Square neighborhood of Chicago, operated as part of the Noble Network of Charter Schools. DRW team members provide coaching, tutoring, and mentoring for students, and serve on Noble's Board of Directors. The school's first class graduated in 2016, with 100 percent of graduating seniors accepted into college.

Products and Services

Principal Trading and Market Making

DRW's core business is proprietary trading and market making, deploying its own capital across a wide range of asset classes and instruments. The firm trades fixed income products, equity index futures and options, exchange-traded funds, foreign exchange, commodities, energy, and cryptocurrencies on centrally cleared exchanges and in over-the-counter markets around the world. DRW's trading strategies range from high-frequency and latency-sensitive strategies to longer-horizon fundamental and quantitative approaches, with holding periods spanning seconds to years. The firm provides liquidity across the instruments it trades, contributing to price discovery and efficient markets on exchanges such as CME Group, Intercontinental Exchange, Eurex, Cboe, and others. ​ DRW employs quantitative research, proprietary technology, and risk management to identify and capture trading opportunities. Its technology teams work closely with traders and researchers to develop flexible, performance-driven systems, including proprietary execution algorithms, data analytics platforms, and network infrastructure. Cumberland's agent in the United Kingdom, DRW Global Markets Ltd, is registered as a cryptoasset firm with the Financial Conduct Authority, and Cumberland New York is licensed by the New York State Department of Financial Services to engage in virtual currency business activity.​ DRW Holdings, LLC is the ultimate parent company for entities in the Cumberland Group. ​

DRW Energy Trading

DRW Energy Trading LLC is the firm's energy commodities marketing, logistics, and trading division, focusing on North American power, natural gas, and emissions markets. The Houston-based operation trades physical and financial energy products, and in 2025, made a strategic equity investment in Catalyst Power Parent LLC to expand into commercial and industrial energy solutions.

Convexity Properties

Convexity Properties is DRW's fully integrated real estate investment arm, established in 2009. The subsidiary invests in properties and development projects throughout the United States, focusing on value-add and repositioning strategies across hospitality, retail, residential, and mixed-use categories.

DRW Venture Capital

DRW Venture Capital (DRWVC) is a stage-agnostic venture capital subsidiary that invests in financial technology and enterprise technology companies, providing portfolio companies with industry insights and access to DRW's trading operations in addition to capital.

Artemeter – carbon solutions

Artemeter is DRW's carbon financing subsidiary, providing full-service solutions that partner with clients to achieve their decarbonization goals. Artemeter's work is connected to DRW's broader engagement with Climate Vault and compliance cap-and-trade carbon markets.

NX – network infrastructure

NX is DRW's dedicated telecommunications subsidiary responsible for designing, building, and operating one of the most sophisticated proprietary networks in the global trading industry. The network provides low-latency connectivity between the firm's offices, exchange data centers, and other critical infrastructure globally. ​

Board of Directors

DRW Holdings, LLC is a privately held firm. 100 percent of the voting equity of DRW Holdings, LLC is owned by Donald R. Wilson Jr. through a trust. Wilson is also the sole manager of DRW Holdings, LLC. The firm does not publicly disclose a formal board of directors. Donald R. Wilson Jr. serves as Founder and chief executive officer.

Executive Management

• Donald R. Wilson Jr. — Founder and Chief Executive Officer
• Joseph Hable — General Counsel
• Jeffrey Levoff — Partner
• Jennifer Wilson — Partner, Risk Management
• Kimberly Trautmann — Head of DRW Venture Capital
• Robert Armour — Chief Compliance Officer

​

Internal risk management

DRW's approach to risk management is central to the firm's operations and has been described as one of the three pillars—along with technology and research—on which the firm was founded. Jennifer Wilson, who serves as partner overseeing risk management, has been responsible for leading the firm-wide initiative to measure and control risk, including modeling volatilities and developing quantitative frameworks for monitoring the firm's positions across all asset classes and geographies.

The firm's risk management infrastructure spans operational, technology, regulatory, and market risk. DRW's principal trading model, in which it deploys its own capital rather than that of outside investors, means the firm bears all trading losses directly, creating a strong internal incentive for rigorous risk controls. The firm employs quantitative models and real-time monitoring systems to measure exposure across all trading desks, and its technology and trading teams are co-located to allow rapid response to market events. During the 2008 Lehman Brothers emergency auction, DRW's risk systems enabled the firm to assess and begin hedging a large, complex multi-asset portfolio within hours of acquisition, a process Wilson described as "beautiful—all the screens lit up, tons of volume going in as we started hedging out the key parts of the portfolio."

Compliance and regulatory engagement

DRW operates within a regulatory framework that includes oversight by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) in the United Kingdom, and various exchange-level regulators. Cumberland New York holds a BitLicense from the New York State Department of Financial Services, and DRW Global Markets Ltd is registered and authorized by the FCA as a cryptoasset firm. The firm maintains compliance and anti-money laundering programs, and posts positions for AML compliance analysts at its Chicago headquarters.

Wilson has been publicly engaged in regulatory policy discussions throughout his career. In 2010, he founded the FIA Principal Traders Group, an affiliate of the Futures Industry Association that represents the interests of proprietary trading firms in regulatory and market structure debates. Wilson also spent considerable time in Washington during the drafting and rule-writing process for the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, advocating for policies related to central clearing of swaps, market transparency, and fairness in exchange market structure. ​

Controversies

CFTC market manipulation case (2013–2018)

The most significant regulatory dispute involving DRW was a civil enforcement action brought by the CFTC against Donald R. Wilson Jr. and DRW Investments, LLC in November 2013. The CFTC alleged that Wilson and DRW had manipulated and attempted to manipulate the price of the IDEX USD Three-Month Interest Rate Swap Futures Contract by "banging the close" during a period from at least January 2011 through August 2011, resulting in alleged profits of approximately $20 million for DRW and losses of an equal amount for counterparties. ​ The background to the case involved DRW's identification in 2010 of what it believed was a significant mispricing in the IDEX contract, which was listed by the International Derivatives Clearinghouse (IDCH) and traded on the NASDAQ OMX Futures Exchange. DRW's quantitative analysis identified a convexity effect—an imbalance in the value of margin payments between the long and short sides of the swap—that other market participants had not recognized. DRW built a position of more than $300 million in notional value, with major counterparties including Jefferies and MF Global, and concentrated its bids within the 15-minute daily settlement window that helped determine the contract's settlement price.

DRW preemptively sued the CFTC in federal court in Chicago in September 2013, seeking a declaration that it had not breached derivatives trading regulations.http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-09-17/drw-investments-sues-to-forestall-cftc-enforcement-action.html The CFTC nonetheless filed its own action in the Southern District of New York in November 2013. In a key pre-trial ruling in September 2016, Judge Analisa Torres rejected the CFTC's proposed lower standard for proving manipulative intent, holding that "there is no manipulation without intent to cause artificial prices," a decision that aligned with DRW's argument and was seen as a significant check on the CFTC's enforcement powers under the Dodd-Frank Act.

The case proceeded to a bench trial in December 2016 before Judge Richard J. Sullivan. On November 30, 2018, Judge Sullivan issued his decision, entering judgment for DRW on all claims. The court found that the CFTC had failed to prove that DRW's bids were at artificial prices, and that DRW's bids had a valid economic purpose, including attracting buyers in a market with low liquidity. Sullivan wrote that "it is not unlawful to be more astute than your counterpart in a transaction." The ruling was widely seen as a landmark in the law of market manipulation and an important precedent for the protection of legitimate trading strategies.

SEC enforcement action against Cumberland DRW (2024–2025)

On October 10, 2024, the Securities and Exchange Commission filed a complaint in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois alleging that Cumberland DRW LLC had operated as an unregistered securities dealer by purchasing and selling more than $2 billion in crypto assets that the SEC characterized as securities, including tokens associated with Polygon, Solana, Cosmos, Algorand, and Filecoin. The SEC alleged that Cumberland had acted as an unregistered dealer since at least March 2018. ​ Cumberland and Wilson publicly pledged to fight the charges. In an interview, Wilson stated that Cumberland had attempted to register as a securities dealer with the SEC, but had been unable to do so, and he characterized the lack of regulatory clarity for crypto firms under then-chair Gary Gensler as a deliberate feature of the agency's approach. Cumberland filed a motion to dismiss in January 2025, arguing that the SEC had failed to establish that the crypto assets were securities at the relevant times, that the major questions doctrine barred the suit, and that the SEC's action violated Cumberland's due process rights.

Following a change in SEC leadership under the Trump administration and a broader shift in the agency's approach to cryptocurrency enforcement, the SEC agreed to drop the case. On March 27, 2025, the SEC filed a joint stipulation with Cumberland to dismiss the case with prejudice. The SEC stated that its decision rested on its judgment that dismissal would "facilitate the Commission's ongoing efforts to reform and renew its regulatory approach to the crypto industry," rather than on any assessment of the merits of the allegations. The dismissal was part of a broader pattern in which the SEC dropped enforcement actions against several cryptocurrency firms, including Kraken, Consensys, Coinbase, and others.

MarketsWiki Education Video, Jeff Levoff, July 2016

Jeff Levoff, Partner, DRW – Make a Market: Proprietary Trading in the Modern Era

“This is not a get-rich-quick scheme. It’s hard work to try to find positive expected value. That’s what we do every day.”

Conceptually, proprietary trading is easy. One must follow two simple steps – finding positive expected value and managing the risk of positions taken. The devil, as always, is in the details.

When Jeff Levoff, partner at DRW, began in the business, positive expected value was an easier proposition. A simple Black-Scholes based software suite would spit out theoretical values, and market makers like Levoff would actively bid below theoretical value, offer above it and – voila! – positive expected value. As markets have grown more complex and as participants have grown more sophisticated, today’s proprietary trader must think and act outside the box to find opportunity.

In this MarketsWiki Education presentation, Levoff demonstrates DRW’s philosophy using quotes from famous people and applying them to the financial markets. Be sure to watch until the end because, as the saying goes, it ain’t over till it’s over.