Radix Trading is an American

proprietary trading Proprietary trading (also known as prop trading) occurs when a trader trades stocks, bonds, currencies, commodities, their derivatives, or other financial instruments with the firm's own money (instead of using customer funds) to make a profit ...

firm headquartered in

Chicago Chicago is the List of municipalities in Illinois, most populous city in the U.S. state of Illinois and in the Midwestern United States. With a population of 2,746,388, as of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, it is the List of Unite ...

. It has additional offices in New York and

Amsterdam Amsterdam ( , ; ; ) is the capital of the Netherlands, capital and Municipalities of the Netherlands, largest city of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. It has a population of 933,680 in June 2024 within the city proper, 1,457,018 in the City Re ...

Background

Radix Trading was co-founded by Benjamin Blander and Michael Rauchman. Blander was previously head of the

high-frequency trading High-frequency trading (HFT) is a type of algorithmic trading in finance characterized by high speeds, high turnover rates, and high order-to-trade ratios that leverages high-frequency financial data and electronic trading tools.Lin, Tom C. W. " ...

group of

Citadel LLC Citadel LLC (formerly known as Citadel Investment Group, LLC) is an American multinational hedge fund and financial services company. Founded in 1990 by Kenneth Griffin, it has more than $65 billion in assets under management . The company has ...

while Rauchman was the chief technology officer of GETCO. In August 2017, Radix Trading opened an office in

to expand its operations into Europe. Amsterdam was selected over

London London is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of both England and the United Kingdom, with a population of in . London metropolitan area, Its wider metropolitan area is the largest in Wester ...

for several reasons, one of which being it having regulatory advantages compared to London due to

Brexit Brexit (, a portmanteau of "Britain" and "Exit") was the Withdrawal from the European Union, withdrawal of the United Kingdom (UK) from the European Union (EU). Brexit officially took place at 23:00 GMT on 31 January 2020 (00:00 1 February ...

. On March 27, 2023, the

Commodity Futures Trading Commission The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) is an Independent agencies of the United States government, independent agency of the US government created in 1974 that regulates the U.S. derivatives markets, which includes futures contract, fut ...

(CFTC) filed a lawsuit against

Binance Binance Holdings Ltd., branded Binance, is the largest cryptocurrency exchange in terms of daily trading volume of cryptocurrencies. Binance was founded in 2017 by Changpeng Zhao, a developer who had previously created high-frequency trading ...

and

Changpeng Zhao Changpeng Zhao ( zh, s=赵长鹏, p=Zhào Chángpéng), commonly known as CZ, is a Chinese-born Canadian businessman. Zhao is the co-founder and former CEO of Binance. He resigned as the CEO in November 2023 after pleading guilty to a money lau ...

in the

United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois The United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois (in case citations, N.D. Ill.) is the federal trial court with jurisdiction over the northern counties of Illinois. It is one of the busiest federal trial courts in the Uni ...

, claiming willful evasion of US law and allegedly breaching derivatives rules. In the lawsuit, three unidentified trading firms were cited as "VIP" clients of Binance although they were not accused of wrongdoing. Radix Trading self-identified that it was 'Trading Firm A' through an article in ''

The Wall Street Journal ''The Wall Street Journal'' (''WSJ''), also referred to simply as the ''Journal,'' is an American newspaper based in New York City. The newspaper provides extensive coverage of news, especially business and finance. It operates on a subscriptio ...

''. The others were later identified as

Jane Street Capital Jane Street Capital is an American proprietary trading firm headquartered in New York City. It employs more than 2,600 people in six offices in New York City, London, Hong Kong, Amsterdam, Chicago, and Singapore, and trades a broad range of asset ...

and

Tower Research Capital Tower Research Capital (also known as Tower Research) is an American quantitative trading firm. Tower Research is headquartered in New York, with additional offices in Chicago, South Charleston, Montreal, London, Amsterdam, Gurgaon, GIFT City, Sin ...

. According to the CFTC, Binance instructed Radix Trading to access its website through a

virtual private network Virtual private network (VPN) is a network architecture for virtually extending a private network (i.e. any computer network which is not the public Internet) across one or multiple other networks which are either untrusted (as they are not con ...

. Blander told ''

'', that while Radix Trading traded on Binance for several years via offshore affiliates and a prime brokerage, he believed it had not done anything wrong. This was because anything related to

cryptocurrency A cryptocurrency (colloquially crypto) is a digital currency designed to work through a computer network that is not reliant on any central authority, such as a government or bank, to uphold or maintain it. Individual coin ownership record ...

connectivity was legally vetted beforehand. He also stated the firm was cooperating with the CFTC regarding its investigation.

References

External links

* {{authority control 2012 establishments in Illinois Financial derivative trading companies Financial services companies established in 2012 Privately held companies based in Illinois Financial services companies based in Illinois Companies based in Chicago