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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

#421

Post by etothepii »

incone123 wrote: post #145
etothepii wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked for an investment bank for many years. We had to sign a declaration that we would not make trades of any kind without permission from compliance (the withholding of this permission in 2012 is why I am not a BitCoin millionaire). However, there was no requirement to hand over login details to brokerage accounts etc. I would be surprised if there was elsewhere.

The person you replied to said 'statements' not 'login details'. Are you treating these things as synonymous? I suppose if I was only required to hand over statements I could edit them.

I was indeed treating as synonymous. There was no requirement to provide statements or any evidence of compliance with the policy. I assume it was assumed that the remedies available for breach of contract would be sufficient.

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

#422

Post by prepend »

yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #219
prepend wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If your knowledge is privileged an non public, and might reasonably impact share prices either way, yes it is illegal. Unless you’re in the US Congress as there is an exception for their legislative insider info.

Okay, so obvious question: Is it legal for random Joe on the street to find out what trades congresspeople are making and mirror them?

If I remember my minimal insider trading training it’s legal if you aren’t an insider. So the example I remember is if you overhear insiders talking in an elevator and trade, that’s legal. If they tell you, that’s illegal.

There are people who mirror the disclosures of trades from Pelosi and others. But by then it’s not possible to realize all the gains.

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

#423

Post by rglover »

Diesel555 wrote: post #401
rustqt6 wrote: post #393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FBI is too busy planting evidence to assign an agent to every person on HN.

> Eschew flamebait. Avoid unrelated controversies and generic tangents. From the Hacker News Guidelines [0]. Please take these comments elsewhere. 0: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

This sounds like something a cop would say.

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

#424

Post by chollida1 »

netheril96 wrote: post #377
chollida1 wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, this is exactly what happens when you work for a hedge fund. You have to provide statements for all trading accounts you and your immediate family own. So, yeah, this is exactly what coin base should be doing. They should require all employees to list all account addresses they have access to. It's a trivial ask for the employee and its trivial to scan

But it is so trivial to create more addresses than one reports to his/her employee. It is also difficult to verify that one has reported all his/her owned addresses.

Sure, and you can always open more brokerage accounts as well.

but the point is two fold.

One: you've done your diligence so as a company you've covered your ass with the regulators.

Two: you've made it clear to the employee what the rules are, if they chose to open a new brokerage account or wallet address then they clearly know they are breaking the rules so there is no confusion.

as one compliance officer said to me, the regulators aren't looking for perfection, they are looking to see that you are following both the rule you laid out in your internal policies and that you are doing what the rest of the industry does.

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

#425

Post by hailwren »

InefficientRed wrote: post #367
hailwren wrote: post #359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, when they indict on the remaining 18 then we can update our models. Until then, the SEC is only alleging that 7 were securities.

That's a horrible prior. This isn't about the SEC at all. Arresting on a subset of eventual charges is something that nearly all prosecutors do, and for a large set of very good strategic reasons. I think you'd be hard-pressed to find many examples of high-profile cases where the original arrest was based on all possible charges.

Yeah, I'm not arguing they don't do that. This is one of those cases where arguing the negative without clearly stating your argument makes things easy but not particularly useful.

What argument are you presenting instead? Because he was charged for 7 instances of security fraud we should assume that all 25 are securities fraud? Regardless of whether the SEC eventually charges all 25, they've clearly decided to differentiate them all on some metric (otherwise, they would've charged them all at the same time).

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

#426

Post by ta988 »

oarabbus_ wrote: post #386
ta988 wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends what the US offers in exchange?

What would they offer to make it worthwhile? It's not like the US is holding Indian nationals in detainment whom the Indian Government would be willing to scour the country to find someone to exchange for release. Perhaps they would for a violent criminal or terrorist, but it certainly seems unlikely for a relatively small-time white collar criminal. The fraud totaled $1.5M, this guy isn't exactly Bernie Madoff. Sure…

Could be lots of things more or less public and unrelated. One more diplomatic visa, help locating/finding/extraditing an India national from U.S., a little help for a contract... Countries have a lot of "diplomatic" incentives they can use for situations like that. And sometimes it is totally worth spending 10x the fraud amount if what you want to do is an example which could well be the case here.

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

#427

Post by spread_love »

philipov wrote: post #420
d--b wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The DoJ isn't prosecuting them for `Insider Trading`. It's prosecuting them for Wire Fraud against Coinbase. Wire Fraud doesn't require there be a security involved at all.

Thank you, can you elaborate a bit? Insider trading involves trading of a company's securities, correct? Because crypto isn't a security in the SEC's eyes, this doesn't apply?

How are they getting them on wire fraud charges? The texts back and forth describing the scheme?

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

#428

Post by koheripbal »

Ergo19 wrote: post #23
mikeyouse wrote: post #11

One perk of a public blockchain is that crimes like these are more transparent! A Twitter user 'discovered' the fraud a few months ago: https://twitter.com/cobie/status/1513874972552355846

As it turns out, a distributed immutable ledger is quite useful for investigators.

Monero prevents all that. Nothing is publicly visible other than the data demonstrating that the transactions are valid.

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

#429

Post by munificent »

siftrics wrote: post #335
munificent wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're only thinking of the first-order effect. If insider trading is allowed then, yes, those who have access to inside information can trade on it more efficiently. But it also highly incentivizes market participants to hide information . In a world where insider trading is allowed, anyone who has access to inside information can now personally monetize it as long as that information does not get out to the wider m…

How will they profit if the information never becomes public?

...by insider trading on it.

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

#430

Post by kart23 »

rglover wrote: post #337
paulpauper wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's amazing how they already had tabs on this guy and just waited for him to leave but without arresting him sooner if you think you broke the law and want to avoid arrest, stay away from the airport. anyone who buys a ticket they get your full info and then the arrest is as easy as picking you up at the gate, nowhere to hide.

So hire a Coyote into Mexico on foot. Got it. For my assigned agent: this is not an admission of guilt, just curiosity and information collection. Carry on.

lol there’s no departure checks at the border, you can just drive across.
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