Chicago-based Radix Trading told the Wall Street Journal that it's the unidentified "Trading Firm A" mentioned in the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission's (CFTC) complaint Monday against crypto exchange Binance and its CEO, Changpeng Zhao.

In the lawsuit, the CFTC talked about at least three U.S.-based quantitative trading firms that were active on Binance even though American customers were supposed to be banned from trading there.

Radix co-founder Benjamin Blander told the Journal his company traded on Binance for several years via offshore affiliates and a prime brokerage. "We got legal vetting on anything we did in terms of crypto connectivity," he said.

Blander told the newspaper his firm was cooperating with the CFTC prior to the lawsuit and he does not believe Radix is the target of any investigation.

Radix's role in crypto is not well-known in the Chicago trading community or crypto industry. One of its founders, Michael Rauchman, previously had a senior role at Getco, a now-defunct firm that was a pioneer in high-frequency trading.

Radix did not respond to a request for comment sent before the Journal story came out.

Binance CFTC High-Frequency Trading Regulation

Stephen Alpher

Stephen is CoinDesk's managing editor for Markets. He previously served as managing editor at Seeking Alpha. A native of suburban Washington, D.C., Stephen went to the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School, majoring in finance. He holds BTC above CoinDesk’s disclosure threshold of $1,000.