DWF Labs Founder Announces Personal Investment In Gaming Protocol Prom

The founder of crypto market maker DWF Labs, Andrei Grachev, has unveiled what he claims to be his first-ever personal investment in a crypto project, backing gaming NFT marketplace Prom.

“I just did my first investment in a crypto project, on my own, not by DWF,” wrote Grachev on Feb. 14, adding, “I invested in Prom with a commitment to hold coins for at least 1 year and support the project properly.”

“Not endorsement, NFA, DYOR, LFG!” said Grachev.

DWF Labs is a controversial firm. According to its website, it holds assets like Tron, Algorand, Fetch.ai, and CryptoGPT, among others. A recent CoinDesk article, however, described the company not as an investment firm but more like an OTC desk – one that blurs the line between trades, investments, and market manipulation.

The company has also been accused of deploying and manipulating memecoins.

Launched in Sep. 2023, DWF Labs is the investment arm of Digital Wave Finance, a high-frequency trading firm. On-chain data platform Arkham Intelligence places DWF Labs’s holdings at $50.7 million, spread across dozens of tokens. Notably, Bitcoin is not one of their holdings.

Prom surged more than 60% on the news, changing hands for $12.24 at the time of writing. Its market cap tops $238M, as per Coingecko.

Prom is an Ethereum-based multi-gaming NFT marketplace that allows users to trade, borrow, and rent their digital assets. It plans to soon offer the digital equivalent of mortgages for investors interested in purchasing digital land.