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Former Coinbase PM charged in cryptocurrency insider trading tipping scheme

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Re: Former Coinbase PM charged in cryptocurrency insider trading tipping scheme

#281
post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

often the feds will surveil someone for a long time and just wait until they try to leave the country . it makes it much easier than trying to do the arrest elsewhere. it's all electronic . You buy a ticket, show your ID/passposrt, and your info will go out.

So you should really drive to central america, I guess?

My dad always said, if shit hit the fan, he would go to Brazil. Brazil isn’t exactly lawless, but it’s such a mass of humanity and so many cultures blending together that literally nobody would stick out like a sore thumb there.

Re: Former Coinbase PM charged in cryptocurrency insider trading tipping scheme

#282
post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Much better to drive across the border and then book a flight with a non-US airline.

He could've taken out cash from his local bank account, turned off his phone, driven to San Ysidro and walked through the public turnstile into Tijuana. And then tried to get a flight from Mexico City to somewhere in south asia. Would have been much better than going through the US/Canada border which has a full data sharing agreement between CBSA and US CBP/ICE. (note: this is a stupid, humorous theoretical, not rea…

Taking a large sum of cash would have probably been a trigger for the folks surveilling him, though. Maybe he could get away but that is going to trigger something.

Re: Former Coinbase PM charged in cryptocurrency insider trading tipping scheme

#283
post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

often the feds will surveil someone for a long time and just wait until they try to leave the country . it makes it much easier than trying to do the arrest elsewhere. it's all electronic . You buy a ticket, show your ID/passposrt, and your info will go out.

So you should really drive to central america, I guess?

They probably have computers on the outgoing checkpoint too. Maybe walk across Rio Grande or something. Or just go to Florida and swim for a really long time.

Re: Former Coinbase PM charged in cryptocurrency insider trading tipping scheme

#284
post #126
post #27

That is barely scratching the surface. I remember reports on reddit of people buying newly listed crypto assets in advance. That was in ~2016 and they didn't even try to hide.

Or how about Litecoin's creator who worked for Coinbase and lobbied for Litecoin to get added to the exchange?

Litecoin was the third cryptocurrency to be added, and it was the most obvious choice to be next, seeing as how it had the next highest market cap after Bitcoin and Ethereum. Before Ethereum was a thing, Litecoin spent a lot of time as the #2 cryptocurrency. It was the original "altcoin". There was already massive demand to add Litecoin, which is probably a key reason that they hired Charlie in the first place.

Re: Former Coinbase PM charged in cryptocurrency insider trading tipping scheme

#285

Wow, the indictment references [this tweet][1] that caused Coinbase to investigate the matter and ultimately led the defendant in being caught at the airport before trying to leave the country. > On May 11, 2022, Coinbase’s director of security operations emailed ISHAN WAHI to inform him that he should appear for an in-person meeting relating to Coinbase’s asset listing process at Coinbase’s Seattle, Washington offic…

There was an HN thread about that tweet, at the time that it was tweeted: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31012462 ( "Insider Trading at Coinbase (twitter.com/cobie)" ) (3 months ago, 333 comments)

During which conversation a fairly large number of HN commenters thought that crypto insider trading wasn't illegal:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31012837

Re: Former Coinbase PM charged in cryptocurrency insider trading tipping scheme

#286
post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

often the feds will surveil someone for a long time and just wait until they try to leave the country . it makes it much easier than trying to do the arrest elsewhere. it's all electronic . You buy a ticket, show your ID/passposrt, and your info will go out.

So you should really drive to central america, I guess?

it was too late for him.

Re: Former Coinbase PM charged in cryptocurrency insider trading tipping scheme

#287
post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you should really drive to central america, I guess?

it was too late for him.

How can you stop someone driving to mexico? They can drive to a border city and walk across without any passport control.

Re: Former Coinbase PM charged in cryptocurrency insider trading tipping scheme

#288
post #85
post #24

Didn’t a handful of Coinbase employees make out like bandits before Ethereum was listed? What’s changed since then?

You might be thinking of Charlie Lee? Charlie Lee joined Coinbase, wash traded Litecoin [1] to give the appearance of wider interest and volume in order to get Litecoin listed on Coinbase, and promptly dumped all his bags at the peak. [1] https://i.redd.it/u9vhbxvr63t71.jpg

Charlie Lee made all his fortune from selling his Bitcoin and Ethereum the rest is marginal. His track record regarding the launch, support and development of Litecoin is impeccable and rather unique in the space. Even half a decade after having no stake in the game he's still dedicating his life to promote and develop Litecoin.

Re: Former Coinbase PM charged in cryptocurrency insider trading tipping scheme

#289
post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Is it me or "decentralised" almost always means "crippled"? The critical function that exchanges have is to allow people to buy and sell tokens. Decentralised exchanges can't do that. They only allow trading a token for another token.

"Decentralized" doesn't mean crippled. "On-chain" does.

At some point, you need to interact with the off-chain world (say, when you want US dollars and not tokenized US dollars), and that path to the physical world becomes a point of failure that can be controlled by mundane means such as uniformed people with guns. The crypto-utopian solution is to move everything on-chain. The pragmatist solution is centralized exchanges that more-or-less plays by the rules of wider society and is allowed by society to move stuff in and out of the blockchain.

Re: Former Coinbase PM charged in cryptocurrency insider trading tipping scheme

#290
post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it was too late for him.

How can you stop someone driving to mexico? They can drive to a border city and walk across without any passport control.

It depends on the stage of the investigation. if he was only a suspect then could he leave whenever he wanted. However, if someone is already indicted but it's sealed, then he would have been under watch without anywhere to go. Or he could hve been stopped and brought before a magistrate. HIs mistake was he waited too long, probably should have left in april before the evidence came out, not May.
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