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OpenAI fires an employee for prediction market insider trading

wired.com

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Re: OpenAI fires an employee for prediction market insider trading

#101

Post by SpicyLemonZest »

holmesworcester wrote: post #50
gtowey wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Insider trading is the raison d'etre of these products.

Isn't insider trading on a prediction market only wrong to the extent the insider is violating some duty of secrecy to the company? And isn't that just between them and their company in a case-by-case sense? If there was some valuable-to-the-public information that the company did not care about keeping private but just hadn't bothered to make public, for whatever reason, and an insider traded on it on a prediction m…

I think there is a society-level interest. It's very bad for the business environment if every employee of every company has monetary incentives to leak private information. It structurally encourages businesses to set up strict information silos where cross-team collaboration is hard no employee can ever be sure of the broader context of their work.

Re: OpenAI fires an employee for prediction market insider trading

#102

Post by raincole »

7777777phil wrote: post #19

77 suspicious positions across 60 wallets, 13 brand-new accounts appearing 40 hours before the browser launch. First confirmed case of a major tech company firing over prediction market trades. I wrote about why prediction markets have a structural insider trading problem that nobody's solved yet: https://philippdubach.com/posts/the-absolute-insider-mess-of...

It's interesting that the both replies under this comment are saying exact same thing, with the exact same term ("raison d'etre"... how often do you hear two random people think of this phrase at the same time?).

It might be nothing, but it'd be funny if karma farming bots are doing some 'reply frontrunning' over the internet.

Re: OpenAI fires an employee for prediction market insider trading

#103

Post by tstenner »

twoodfin wrote: post #66
gtowey wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. When you give people strong economic incentives to ignore morality, some people will. Not all, but enough to make a hash of things. In any population there will be some people who will do things they know are wrong just to get ahead. For Airbnb landlords I'm sure the thought process goes like " I'm just one person so I can't be having enough of an impact to be a problem. And besides, I need the money." Bu…

I’m struggling to understand the moral character of taxi service regulatory capture and monopolization.

Your taxi crashes because the driver skipped brake maintenance and his insurance doesn't reimburse you for your hospital costs because commercial transportation isn't covered. Sure would be nice to have some minimum requirements for taxis.

Re: OpenAI fires an employee for prediction market insider trading

#104

Post by tjwebbnorfolk »

ThePowerOfDirge wrote: post #80
throwaway5752 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Prediction markets exist to bypass gambling restrictions and monetize insider trading. It isn't a problem, it is their raison d'etre.

Gambling = investing. Buying stocks is also gambling. Share buybacks, dividends, fancy words for forking money from workers to some joe schmoe that bought a lottery ticket, i.e., a stock.

A stock is ownership in a business, same as ownership in a house. It is an asset that you own.

When you bet on blackjack or the superbowl, you own nothing and are simply wagering on the outcome of an event.

Gambling and equity ownership are not the same.

Re: OpenAI fires an employee for prediction market insider trading

#105

Post by JasonADrury »

ajkjk wrote: post #63
jacquesm wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The perfect example is speed limits: everybody thinks they're good and yet they all seem to classify all other drivers into two categories: slowpokes and maniacs. Nobody seems to be able to agree on what a responsible set of rules is around the speed of vehicles.

This is entirely made up? Most people are totally fine with speed limits being what they are and don't say anything about it.

In the sense that they don't care what the sign says when it comes to their own driving? Sure.

Re: OpenAI fires an employee for prediction market insider trading

#107

Post by JasonADrury »

ruined wrote: post #25
xrd wrote: post #3

A fun aside: this person obviously created a bunch of new Bitcoin accounts to hide their activity. It makes you think that if you were able to surreptitiously add malicious side channel software into a popular npm package that you wouldn't just need to hunt for crypto wallets with balances. You could also probably find a market for crypto wallets with small balances or zero balances. The history and date of creation…

you can't "change the password" on a wallet, so a "used" wallet is highly unattractive. anything you put in it could be taken by the original keyholder who sold it to you.

Oh but you can. You can swap out the seed and generate any new addresses using that.

Yes, the old addresses will be compromised. That's fine. The point is that nobody can tell that you aren't actually using the same keys to generate new addresses anymore.

Re: OpenAI fires an employee for prediction market insider trading

#108

Post by ekjhgkejhgk »

gtowey wrote: post #28
7777777phil wrote: post #19

77 suspicious positions across 60 wallets, 13 brand-new accounts appearing 40 hours before the browser launch. First confirmed case of a major tech company firing over prediction market trades. I wrote about why prediction markets have a structural insider trading problem that nobody's solved yet: https://philippdubach.com/posts/the-absolute-insider-mess-of...

Insider trading is the raison d'etre of these products.

Excuse me it's called price discovery.

Re: OpenAI fires an employee for prediction market insider trading

#109

Post by tmp10423288442 »

tyre wrote: post #72
holmesworcester wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't insider trading on a prediction market only wrong to the extent the insider is violating some duty of secrecy to the company? And isn't that just between them and their company in a case-by-case sense? If there was some valuable-to-the-public information that the company did not care about keeping private but just hadn't bothered to make public, for whatever reason, and an insider traded on it on a prediction m…

> Isn't insider trading on a prediction market only wrong to the extent the insider is violating some duty of secrecy to the company? Yes. Prediction markets, for corruption reasons, are regulated by the CFTC. In commodities markets, actors are assumed to be making trades based on propriety information. Hedging is the whole purpose! > …like it's a stock market where there is some society-level interest in giving part…

Your comment seems to imply that trading based on material non-public information in prediction markets is always okay, which is not the case. The CFTC just made a press release detailing some instances of invalid use of nonpublic information on prediction markets: https://www.cftc.gov/PressRoom/PressReleases/9185-26

Interestingly, the CFTC objects to a political candidate trading on their own candidacy on the grounds that it is fraudulent. So it looks like they could attempt to regulate self-trading quite strictly, at least if that theory holds up after a court challenge.

Re: OpenAI fires an employee for prediction market insider trading

#110

Post by kennyadam »

raincole wrote: post #102
7777777phil wrote: post #19

77 suspicious positions across 60 wallets, 13 brand-new accounts appearing 40 hours before the browser launch. First confirmed case of a major tech company firing over prediction market trades. I wrote about why prediction markets have a structural insider trading problem that nobody's solved yet: https://philippdubach.com/posts/the-absolute-insider-mess-of...

It's interesting that the both replies under this comment are saying exact same thing, with the exact same term ("raison d'etre"... how often do you hear two random people think of this phrase at the same time?). It might be nothing, but it'd be funny if karma farming bots are doing some 'reply frontrunning' over the internet.

I don’t consider “raison d'etre" a suspicious phrase. It’s not something people use multiple times a day, but I’d consider it common enough that when I hear someone say it, or in this case I suppose type it, that I would give it a second thought.
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