--- title: "How the trading firm worked with Huobi Russia, VRM Trade and FTX" language: en canonical: https://dossiertwist.com/dossiers/digital-wave-finance/trading/ as_of: 2026-10-07 keywords: ["Digital Wave Finance AG","DWF Labs","Andrei Grachev","Marco Schweizer","Remo Schweizer","Michael Rendchen","Louis Bisang","Darley Technologies AG","Turcapital AG","Digital Wave Assets AG","DWF LABS PTE. LTD.","DWF MaaS Limited","Huobi Russia","VRM Trade","Black Ocean","World Liberty Financial","FTX","Zug commercial register","crypto market maker","high-frequency trading"] --- # How the trading firm worked with Huobi Russia, VRM Trade and FTX **Question.** What is known about how Digital Wave Finance traded, and about VRM Trade, the brand through which Andrei Grachev worked with it? **Answer.** According to Grachev and the cryptocurrency news outlet, the firm started trading on Huobi Russia, the Moscow exchange Grachev headed, on preferential fee terms, and by 2020 traded on more than ten exchanges with top fee levels. Grachev then worked with it under VRM Trade, which he called an "artificial brand" of Digital Wave Finance; VRM Trade's Black Ocean project raised $4.3 million but never went live, the cryptocurrency news outlet reported. Digital Wave Finance AG held 381,534 Series B shares of FTX, and DWF Labs said it traded through FTX's collapse with minimised impact. ## Huobi Russia and the first exchange terms - Analysis: Huobi Russia was a Moscow exchange launched in December 2018 in partnership with the Digital Transformation Center of the state-owned Russian development bank VEB and under Huobi's regional exchange partnership programme, Huobi Cloud. According to the cryptocurrency news outlet it was a local exchange licensed by Huobi Global, now HTX, through the cloud programme, using Huobi's branding, software and trading liquidity. At a press conference in Moscow, which the exchange's website dates to 6 December 2018, its head Andrei Grachev said that it offered high-frequency trading on special fee terms; the cryptocurrency news outlet dates the official launch to 8 December 2018. [src-083] [src-002] - Analysis: Grachev described the start of the partnership to a cryptocurrency news outlet in September 2023. As chief executive of Huobi Russia in 2018, he said, he urgently needed traders, met a high-frequency trading team that was looking for an exchange account with good rates and spent two months persuading Huobi's management to give it the best possible rates. He recalled that the team first deposited $50,000, that its trading volume reached $10 million on the first day and $22 million on the second, and that in summer 2019 he introduced it to OKEx and Huobi and took charge of relations with them. This is his recollection: he dates the agreement to April 2018, earlier than the registration of Digital Wave Finance AG on 18 December 2018 and the launch of Huobi Russia that month, and he refers to the team by the later name DWF Labs. The cryptocurrency news outlet, retelling the interview, writes that Grachev cited the volume at Huobi Russia's official launch on 8 December 2018 and that the Swiss firm was registered three days later. [src-075] [src-002] - Analysis: According to profit and loss documents seen by the cryptocurrency news outlet, by the end of 2020 the firm was trading on more than ten exchanges, including Huobi Russia and Jiamix, two exchanges tied to Grachev. It was seeing results mainly on the futures platforms of Binance and Huobi and made more than $1 million of profit in September 2020. An internal document seen by the cryptocurrency news outlet showed VIP 7 status on Bitfinex and OKEx and negative maker fees on at least seven exchanges; on Binance its maker fee was -0.002% and its taker fee 0.0157%, which made high-frequency trading far cheaper for the company and for anyone using its sub-accounts. Unnamed sources familiar with its operations told the cryptocurrency news outlet that early success gave it access to $50 million of capital and that its volume was so high that it paid a few hundred thousand dollars in fees a day on Huobi even at the lowest rates. The documents are not retained in this case, the fee figures are the cryptocurrency news outlet's reading of them, and the $50 million figure comes from an unnamed person. [src-002] ## VRM Trade and Black Ocean - Analysis: Shortly before Huobi Russia closed in December 2020, the cryptocurrency news outlet reported, Grachev set up a Latvian company called Vroom and launched a website under the name VRM Trade. Grachev later said on a podcast that he and the Digital Wave Finance team became friends and that he helped the firm integrate with other exchanges and obtain suitable fees through his connections in China. The cryptocurrency news outlet describes the arrangement as a joint venture in which the trading firm traded tokens on the major exchanges while Grachev handled relations with exchanges and trading on smaller ones. No agreement between Grachev or VRM Trade and Digital Wave Finance AG is retained, and the register does not list Grachev among the company's officers. In an April 2023 interview with the cryptocurrency news outlet, Grachev described VRM Trade as an "artificial brand" of Digital Wave Finance. VRM Trade's website advertised average daily trading volume of $9 million in 2018, $440 million in 2019 and $1.7 billion in 2020; the cryptocurrency news outlet attributes all of it to Digital Wave Finance because VRM Trade had only just launched. The figures are VRM Trade's own advertising preserved in an archived website, and their attribution is the cryptocurrency news outlet's inference. [src-002] - Analysis: One of VRM Trade's main strategies, according to the cryptocurrency news outlet, was to incubate other trading firms: it offered them Digital Wave Finance's low exchange rates and some funding, and successful teams would form a joint venture giving VRM 30 to 49% of the company. Vladimir Demin, whom the cryptocurrency news outlet describes as a co-founder of VRM Trade, later said in an interview that the company had worked with 30 such teams. The terms come from VRM Trade's archived website and Demin's interview as reported by the cryptocurrency news outlet. [src-002] - Analysis: VRM Trade's main ambition, the cryptocurrency news outlet reported, was Black Ocean, a planned dark pool for institutions and liquidity pool for brokers built around a "fly" token that went live in January 2021. By 14 March 2021 VRM Trade had raised $4.3 million for Black Ocean from investors including NGC Ventures, FBG Capital and LD Capital, according to a press release, but the platform never went live. A person familiar with the company told the cryptocurrency news outlet that "the project lasted a year and then died" and that "none of the investors got reimbursed". Those statements come from that one unnamed person, and no investor complaint or proceeding is recorded in the retained material. Grachev's own biography on VRM Trade's website, as archived on 10 March 2021, said that he co-founded Black Ocean in 2020, developed its concept of a dark pool and liquidity pool for professional traders and "executed successful launch of the platform". According to the cryptocurrency news outlet, a company called VRM Korea later acquired the fly token project, which the cryptocurrency news outlet described in December 2023 as still in development; the token's price had flatlined since early 2022, down 99.5% from its all-time high, and the VRM Trade branding was dropped by June 2022. [src-002] [src-020] - Analysis: Internal messages obtained by the cryptocurrency news outlet show Grachev saying that from January 2022 new projects on VRM Trade's token launchpad would have to accept five conditions, including that the token price must triple after listing, failing which VRM Trade would not pass on the funds raised, and that VRM Trade would need to know clearly "how the project will manage liquidity and pump". The messages are described by the cryptocurrency news outlet and not retained here. [src-002] ## FTX and HTX - Analysis: The list of equity holders of FTX Trading Ltd. filed on 9 January 2023 in its Chapter 11 case no. 22-11068 (JTD) before the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware lists Digital Wave Finance AG, Suurstoffi 12A, Rotkreuz, as the holder of 381,534 Series B preferred shares. The list shows the holding, not a purchase price or a claim amount, and the retained copy was obtained from a court-records archive rather than the court's own system. The cryptocurrency news outlet reported that the shares were issued in FTX's two 2021 Series B rounds and that DWF Labs had funds on FTX when the exchange collapsed in November 2022 and was one of its creditors, as Grachev told a cryptocurrency news outlet; the magazine wrote that Digital Wave Finance was listed among FTX's creditors after buying shares in a 2021 offering. Neither the amount of DWF Labs' funds on FTX nor any filed claim is documented in the retained records. In a press release of 15 November 2022 DWF Labs said it had been able to trade through the collapse with minimised impact thanks to its risk-management framework. [src-026] [src-002] [src-030] [src-007] - Analysis: In September 2023, the cryptocurrency news outlet reported citing a post by Grachev on X, HTX, formerly Huobi, gave Digital Wave Finance an award as its best partner; the award itself is not retained. [src-070] ## Sources - [src-083] Company statement source · src-083 - [src-002] Media source · src-002 - [src-075] Media source · src-075 - [src-020] Company statement source · src-020 - [src-026] Court record source · src-026 - [src-030] Company statement source · src-030 - [src-007] Media source · src-007 - [src-070] Media source · src-070