Didn’t a handful of Coinbase employees make out like bandits before Ethereum was listed? What’s changed since then?
As far as I know Coinbase employees had leverage enabled for them when BCH was listed and they knew the whole trajectory.
Former Coinbase PM charged in cryptocurrency insider trading tipping scheme
201–210 of 446 posts
Re: Former Coinbase PM charged in cryptocurrency insider trading tipping scheme
#202Earlier quoted context omitted.
A lot of people suspect there's ""official"" insider trading at the exchanges; there's no reason for the exchange not to front-run orders or fake the order book if they think they can get away with it. Or trade against heavily leveraged positions to liquidate them. Or prop-trade with the customers' money.
"A lot of people suspect"? Are we being overt? Am I the only one that not very subtly got offered insider trading of NFT tokens as a perk for joining a crypto company?
I'd be very curious to hear more about this..
Re: Former Coinbase PM charged in cryptocurrency insider trading tipping scheme
#203Earlier quoted context omitted.
That specific thing is kind of trivial to check though. Download the full chain, check which addresses has exactly the same list of tokens as the list was published by Coinbase, check which ones received the tokens shortly before it was announced.
yes true but you still have to be intentional about what it is you’re searching for.
with some effort the search can be automated.
Re: Former Coinbase PM charged in cryptocurrency insider trading tipping scheme
#204> As a result of the insider trading scheme, NIKHIL WAHI and RAMANI collectively generated realized and unrealized gains totaling at least approximately $1.5 million.
Is this a joke? Seriously. I thought this case was about people inside trading hundreds of millions of dollars.
Re: Former Coinbase PM charged in cryptocurrency insider trading tipping scheme
#205Earlier quoted context omitted.
> They are seen as a necessary (but temporary) evil to bridge the "legacy" fiat world. There is no world in which they can put that genie back in the bottle, so I really hope they don’t actually believe it’s “temporary.”
The top decentralized exchange, Uniswap, has overtaken the top centralized exhanges in liquidity depth for several major trading pairs: https://uniswap.org/blog/uniswap-v3-dominance So there is a world where centralized exchanges have far less relevance than they do today.
I just don't see it going away. Services like Coinbase have done more for adoption than any crypto-evangelists on message boards ever have if we're being honest with ourselves. People need it to feel familiar, and these pseudo-banks/stock exchange platforms feel close enough to the "real thing" that people are making the jump. I mean the fact that over a decade later and wallets are still this incredibly high-friction experience for users says a lot. Just having an easy place where you go "input debit card, get crypto," makes all the difference - and that's a service large exchanges have covered, thus locking people into their platform(s).
Edit: Also, Uniswap...ehhhh. Not a great example for your point.
Re: Former Coinbase PM charged in cryptocurrency insider trading tipping scheme
#206It talks volumes about the internal controls at CB that it took a tweet to expose this. Given the speed with which they grew last two years I expect their financial and security processes to be next to nothing. This is just tip of an iceberg. Insiders would have made tens of millions over last two years of bull run, if not more. This dude just got greedy and unlucky to get caught just as the crypto bubble began burst…
Given the speed with which they grew last two years I expect their financial and security processes to be next to nothing. This is just tip of an iceberg. Sounds like wild accusations to me. Id like to think the company executives have high integrity and maybe they caught others we havent heard of.
Undeveloped financial and security processes aren't a question of solely integrity.
You need integrity to implement them, but just having integrity doesn't mean you're going to implement them, or to implement them correctly.
You need expertise, experience, and to get burned a couple dozen times before your institution figures out how to do these things right. And even then, it's a constantly moving target.
Re: Former Coinbase PM charged in cryptocurrency insider trading tipping scheme
#207Earlier quoted context omitted.
A lot of people suspect there's ""official"" insider trading at the exchanges; there's no reason for the exchange not to front-run orders or fake the order book if they think they can get away with it. Or trade against heavily leveraged positions to liquidate them. Or prop-trade with the customers' money.
Crypto people love to talk about incentives when referring to things like crypto adoption by the market, or corrupt actions on the part of incumbent powers like bankers or politicians. They are much less enthusiastic about discussing incentives when it comes to things like exchange operatiors front running their clients, centralizing forces in crypto generally, etc.
Depends on who you're talking to, but I think the interest by crypto people in Uniswap suggests they're pretty aware of this problem and not excusing it.
Re: Former Coinbase PM charged in cryptocurrency insider trading tipping scheme
#208Unpopular opinion incoming: the concept of insider trading is stupid, and even more stupid applied to cryptocurrency. People will always find ways to profit from privileged information. The least careful ones will just keep getting caught while the most careful reap the rewards and get away with it. Cryptocurrency isn't even a regulated asset, how can someone be 'insider trading' it? What insider trading really means…
For a free market to have "perfect competition", one of the requirements is that "Buyers have complete or perfect information (in the past, present, and future) about the product being sold and the prices charged by each firm."
Information asymmetry is a big factor acting against a free market that is "perfectly competitive". In the US, commerce regulations are more or less meant to to push the market as close as possible to this theoretical state of perfect competition.
Insider trading, front running, or any similar forms, directly act against this goal and increase information asymmetry.
Re: Former Coinbase PM charged in cryptocurrency insider trading tipping scheme
#209Earlier quoted context omitted.
Which Twitter account was it?
https://twitter.com/cobie/status/1513874972552355846
I appreciate how the top reply to that Tweet is an animated GIF of Speaker Pelosi rubbing her hands together.
Note: Speaker Pelosi has not been arrested for insider trading
Re: Former Coinbase PM charged in cryptocurrency insider trading tipping scheme
#210Charged for what? There is no "insider trading" with cryptos, just as there isn't any with Forex, fiat currencies. He can't be charged, because there is no crime. No law prevents you to trade cryptocurrencies or fiat on insider knowledge. Might be unethical, but not illegal.