DRW

The crypto arm came from a Grateful Dead song. Cumberland, launched in 2014 and now one of the largest institutional crypto liquidity providers, began as Cumberland Mining and Materials before pivoting from mining to OTC trading.

DRW itself carries the initials of Donald R. Wilson Jr., a former Chicago Mercantile Exchange options trader who founded the firm in 1992 on the bet that quantitative modeling was underused in markets. It now trades principal capital across fixed income, derivatives, energy, agriculture, equities, and digital assets, on horizons from seconds to years. Wilson built out through acquisitions of Chopper Trading and Montreal's Vigilant, spun up a real estate arm and a venture fund, and in 2020 made DRW the first carbon-neutral global trading firm via Climate Vault, which he co-founded with the University of Chicago.