Key Takeaways
- • James Elford has left Numerai, the crowdsourced crypto hedge fund, after three years to join Don Wilson's DRW Trading as a senior research engineer in its London office, according to eFinancialCareers.
- • Elford served as head of trading technology at Numerai before becoming its CTO roughly halfway through his tenure.
- • Numerai aggregates model submissions from external data scientists and pays contributors based on submission quality, with the option to stake capital via its NMR token.
- • One Numerai user has staked the equivalent of $855k on the platform and achieved 106% returns over the past year, per the article.
- • DRW is thought to operate almost like a family office, making long-term directional bets in line with founder Don Wilson's vision, a sharp contrast to Numerai's model.
Summary
James Elford has joined DRW Trading as a senior research engineer in its London office, according to eFinancialCareers. He spent three years at Numerai, where he initially served as head of trading technology and later became chief technology officer roughly halfway through his tenure. Numerai is described as a crowdsourced crypto hedge fund that invites independent quantitative researchers to build trading models. It runs model contests and aggregates the submissions through a team of data scientists to construct its own trading models. The closest comparison outside crypto is WorldQuant's BRAIN platform, which lets consultants test strategies in a simulated trading environment.
Numerai pays users according to the quality of their submissions and allows them to stake their own capital on their models through its cryptocurrency, NMR. The article notes that one user has staked the equivalent of $855k on the platform and achieved returns of 106% over the past year.
Elford's earlier career was more conventional for an electronic trading engineer. He worked at high-frequency trading firm Optiver on back-office technology in FX options and was a development lead at London quant fund Aspect Capital.
The move represents a change of pace. DRW made its name as an electronic trading firm but is now thought to operate much like a family office, making long-term directional bets reflecting the vision of founder Don Wilson. The article characterizes this as a markedly different environment from Numerai's crowdsourced, model-contest structure.
Numerai pays users according to the quality of their submissions and allows them to stake their own capital on their models through its cryptocurrency, NMR. The article notes that one user has staked the equivalent of $855k on the platform and achieved returns of 106% over the past year.
Elford's earlier career was more conventional for an electronic trading engineer. He worked at high-frequency trading firm Optiver on back-office technology in FX options and was a development lead at London quant fund Aspect Capital.
The move represents a change of pace. DRW made its name as an electronic trading firm but is now thought to operate much like a family office, making long-term directional bets reflecting the vision of founder Don Wilson. The article characterizes this as a markedly different environment from Numerai's crowdsourced, model-contest structure.
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