Insider Trading at Coinbase • Hacker News Board

Re: Insider Trading at Coinbase

#21

Post by logicchains » Wed, Apr 13, 2022, 10:09 AM UTC

beaconstudios wrote: post #12

Drakim wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the world of cryptocurrency, even the wrist slap isn't a given. To me, cryptocurrency has been a very cool social experiment in what pure unregulated free market capitalism would work like in practice. Supposedly in place of regulations, companies would live on reputation and trustworthy business practices. If you use poisonous lead in your soup cans, people will stop buying your soup when word gets out, no need t…

The experiment wasn't even necessary - the Gilded Age was a libertarian's paradise with the gold standard and very little government regulation. What do we most associate with this era? Robber barons, utility monopolies screwing people over with ruthless business practices, confidence men and literal snake oil quack medicine. I genuinely can't think of a good (ie moral) reason to support the idea given how it is pred…

>The experiment wasn't even necessary - the Gilded Age was a libertarian'paradise with the gold standard and very little government regulation. What do we most associate with this era? Robber barons, utility monopolies screwing people over with ruthless business practices, confidence men and literal snake oil quack medicine.

The rate of economic growth and improvement in people's living standards was much higher back then than it is now.

Similarly the average adult back then was much healthier than the average adult nowadays, who is likely overweight or obese with some chronic illness. In spite of the vast amount of pills modern people take. So healthcare hasn't necessarily improved much either.

Re: Insider Trading at Coinbase

#22

Post by lexapro » Wed, Apr 13, 2022, 10:13 AM UTC

logicchains wrote: post #14

pearjuice wrote: post #2

Why wouldn't they? The risk of getting caught is virtually zero if you do it right and even if you get caught you get a slap on the wrist and a fine at best. It's just pathetic that for a company which so hard tries to legitimize crypto they have issues like this over and over again. The inherent nature of a "get rich quick" ecosystem where the incentives to pull all kinds of shady and illegal actions are too high an…

Economically speaking insider trading represents a net positive for the market as it brings information onto the market sooner, allows it to reach a better price sooner. The only people hurt by insider trading are those to whom the person doing insider trading has a fiduciary duty, which for a Coinbase employee would be Coinbase itself. Other markets like commodities and real estate have gotten along perfectly fine w…

Anyone that loses money they wouldn't have lost otherwise is hurt by insider trading. And if you make it legal, people will try anything to gain insider information.

Re: Insider Trading at Coinbase

#23

Post by Steele69 » Wed, Apr 13, 2022, 10:14 AM UTC

No post body was provided.

Re: Insider Trading at Coinbase

#24

Post by cbg0 » Wed, Apr 13, 2022, 10:16 AM UTC

Drakim wrote: post #8

whywhywhywhy wrote: post #3

Insider trading should just be legal and fine. I mean politicians do it every day so I don’t see why normal people shouldn’t be allowed to. Or make it actually illegal not just “legal if you have enough resources”

Modern society would collapse if insider trading was legal. It would about as well as making bribery legal.

> It would about as well as making bribery legal.

You mean like how lobbying is legal in the US?

Re: Insider Trading at Coinbase

#25

Post by lexapro » Wed, Apr 13, 2022, 10:16 AM UTC

logicchains wrote: post #16

Drakim wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Modern society would collapse if insider trading was legal. It would about as well as making bribery legal.

That's absurd. Insider trading makes markets more efficient as the information enters the market earlier, allowing them to reach the correct price sooner. There's no insider trading laws in commodities or real estate, have those markets collapsed?

Who would invest in a company if senior management is allowed to steal from investors? You might as well legalize stealing. Markets need trust.

Re: Insider Trading at Coinbase

#26

Post by soco » Wed, Apr 13, 2022, 10:17 AM UTC

logicchains wrote: post #21

beaconstudios wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The experiment wasn't even necessary - the Gilded Age was a libertarian's paradise with the gold standard and very little government regulation. What do we most associate with this era? Robber barons, utility monopolies screwing people over with ruthless business practices, confidence men and literal snake oil quack medicine. I genuinely can't think of a good (ie moral) reason to support the idea given how it is pred…

>The experiment wasn't even necessary - the Gilded Age was a libertarian'paradise with the gold standard and very little government regulation. What do we most associate with this era? Robber barons, utility monopolies screwing people over with ruthless business practices, confidence men and literal snake oil quack medicine. The rate of economic growth and improvement in people's living standards was much higher back…

I don't know what the Gilded Age was (and too lazy to search) but, I quote "Over the past 160 years, life expectancy (from birth) in the United States has risen from 39.4 years in 1860, to 78.9 years in 2020"[1] so please do show some support for the affirmation "the average adult back then was much healthier". Unless you mean they all died healthy around 40 years of age - as in, they were totally healthy until 40 then the first illness killed them clean.

[1]https://www.statista.com/statistics/1040079/life-expectancy-...

Re: Insider Trading at Coinbase

#27

Post by beaconstudios » Wed, Apr 13, 2022, 10:19 AM UTC

logicchains wrote: post #21

beaconstudios wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The experiment wasn't even necessary - the Gilded Age was a libertarian's paradise with the gold standard and very little government regulation. What do we most associate with this era? Robber barons, utility monopolies screwing people over with ruthless business practices, confidence men and literal snake oil quack medicine. I genuinely can't think of a good (ie moral) reason to support the idea given how it is pred…

>The experiment wasn't even necessary - the Gilded Age was a libertarian'paradise with the gold standard and very little government regulation. What do we most associate with this era? Robber barons, utility monopolies screwing people over with ruthless business practices, confidence men and literal snake oil quack medicine. The rate of economic growth and improvement in people's living standards was much higher back…

> The rate of economic growth and improvement in people's living standards was much higher back then than it is now.

During the industrial revolution? I would expect so. At this point we're on the tail end of those improvements.

> Similarly the average adult back then was much healthier than the average adult nowadays, who is likely overweight or obese with some chronic illness.

Life expectancy has been going up for a long time, but on the obesity front the advent of highly sugary foods thanks to food giants is a result of profiteering, not regulation, and people driving everywhere instead of getting exercise is not because of regulation (though it is due to city planning).

> So healthcare hasn't necessarily improved much either.

Are you sincerely arguing that modern medicine isn't much of an improvement over snake oil medicine? The discovery of penicillin alone has saved literally billions* of lives, to say nothing of painkillers, modern surgical hygiene, pharmaceuticals, vaccines, just so so many improvements in healthcare. I can't take this argument seriously I'm afraid, I can only assume it's a post hoc rationalisation.

* hundreds of millions, I misremembered the number.

Re: Insider Trading at Coinbase

#28

Post by lvl102 » Wed, Apr 13, 2022, 10:19 AM UTC

logicchains wrote: post #14

pearjuice wrote: post #2

Why wouldn't they? The risk of getting caught is virtually zero if you do it right and even if you get caught you get a slap on the wrist and a fine at best. It's just pathetic that for a company which so hard tries to legitimize crypto they have issues like this over and over again. The inherent nature of a "get rich quick" ecosystem where the incentives to pull all kinds of shady and illegal actions are too high an…

Economically speaking insider trading represents a net positive for the market as it brings information onto the market sooner, allows it to reach a better price sooner. The only people hurt by insider trading are those to whom the person doing insider trading has a fiduciary duty, which for a Coinbase employee would be Coinbase itself. Other markets like commodities and real estate have gotten along perfectly fine w…

None of this is true. Don’t compare some shitcoin with nonexistent liquidity to real-world commodities.

Re: Insider Trading at Coinbase

#29

Post by tsimionescu » Wed, Apr 13, 2022, 10:20 AM UTC

logicchains wrote: post #14

pearjuice wrote: post #2

Why wouldn't they? The risk of getting caught is virtually zero if you do it right and even if you get caught you get a slap on the wrist and a fine at best. It's just pathetic that for a company which so hard tries to legitimize crypto they have issues like this over and over again. The inherent nature of a "get rich quick" ecosystem where the incentives to pull all kinds of shady and illegal actions are too high an…

Economically speaking insider trading represents a net positive for the market as it brings information onto the market sooner, allows it to reach a better price sooner. The only people hurt by insider trading are those to whom the person doing insider trading has a fiduciary duty, which for a Coinbase employee would be Coinbase itself. Other markets like commodities and real estate have gotten along perfectly fine w…

> Economically speaking insider trading represents a net positive for the market as it brings information onto the market sooner, allows it to reach a better price sooner.

No, economically speaking insider trading just hurts the market, as all free market models work only in so far as all actors have equal access to information. Unequal information makes the market less efficient. Hidden information that is not used in trades doesn't affect market efficiency, as all actors get a chance to decide a new price once the information becomes public.

> The only people hurt by insider trading are those to whom the person doing insider trading has a fiduciary duty, which for a Coinbase employee would be Coinbase itself.

No, the people most hurt by insider trading are the cpunter-parties to those trades, who are acting on inferior information. It is a type of fraud - I'm acting as if the publicly known information is up to date, but in fact I know something the rest of the market doesn't about the value of the good I'm trading. It's like selling beans that have been publicly shown to be magical, while I happen to know the public show was staged and they are in fact normal beans.

Re: Insider Trading at Coinbase

#30

Post by ftlio » Wed, Apr 13, 2022, 10:21 AM UTC

elefanten wrote: post #15

beaconstudios wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I honestly think you'd be hard pressed to find a crypto business that isn't rooted in some kind of scam, greater fool scheme, pyramid scheme, or the like. The whole industry is a mess.

And you think this on what basis? Engagement with the space, or your emotional knee jerk reactions to the occasional headline you read? This comment comes across utterly unserious.

Are there a lot of businesses in the space not attempting to service lots of new coins that are generally characterized by lack of novelty, lots of marketing fuel, or where if there is novelty vis a vis cryptocurrency, it isn't highly questionable?

For better or for worse, it seems the case that most businesses in the so-called cryptocurrency space are working with some pretty dubious "assets" with some pretty dubious backers, which would make your parent comment pretty accurate.