Ex-Coinbase manager charged in first-ever crypto insider trading case A now-former Coinbase manager, his brother, and a friend were today charged with wire fraud conspiracy and wire fraud in connection with the first-ever cryptocurrency insider trading scheme in the US. Ishan Wahi, a 32-year-old ex-product manager at Coinbase Global who lives in Seattle, Washington, and his 26-year-old brother …
The whole damn thing's a fraud. How can they have not yet realised that whoever was behind this bunch of new "currencies" that have been magically conjured up from nothing are also holding back a substantial amount and are waiting to cash out as soon as enough fools have rushed in with real money? Until they start hitting this at source, the proliferation of worthless crap will carry on, and the ultimate crash when everybody and his dog wants to create their own coin will be utterly disastrous.
The cry will go up : "what were we thinking?". The answer will be : "you weren't".
@Howard Sway “The whole damn thing's a fraud.”
You are right, a fraud that is started by the original creator/implementors of a crypto currency.
But is what Ishan Wahi alleged to have done insider trading or Federal?
I can see the fraud in disclosing the confidential information that the company he worked for was going to list a crypto currency, information he agreed not to disclose.
The Securities and Exchange Commission are ones bringing actions for violations of the federal securities laws, including fraud and insider trading. SEC claim jurisdiction because the crypto currencies are securities so federal securities laws apply.
From the linked litigation SEC’s short definition:-
“A digital token or crypto asset is a crypto asset security if it meets the definition of a security, which the Securities Act defines to include “investment contract,” i.e., if it constitutes an investment of money, in a common enterprise, with a reasonable expectation of profit derived from the efforts of others.”
There is more detail reasoning in the litigation, but it seems to me all crypto currency would meet SEC’s definition of a crypto asset security. So, if crypto currencies are securities should they not be regulated as securities. Because the way they are created and traded, that does not seem to be the case.
> USD and GBP are not, despite public presumption, backed by anything.
That's not quite right on a number of fronts, with the salient one at the end of the day being that they both have sophisticated armies to defend (and further) their economic interests.
At some point I expect someone might try a Billion Dollar Brain plan, and it'll probably end like in the film anyway. :)
the point is the dollar and the pound are not backed by gold silver or anything else, just like cryptocurrencies.
The UK won't go to war to protect the value of a pound; if they did, the value of it would fall considerably, the same as the dollar...
both central reserve banks have been creating their respective currencies out of thin air in their trillions, in the process of quantitative easing, that has been going on seriously to get the markets out of the 2008 crash.
I fail to see the reference to the film, about an anti-soviet conspiracy controlled by a computer.
Personally, I see all currency as a bad investment and turn cash into something tangible at the first opportunity.
I was pointing out the fact so-called "real" currencies are just as vulnerable as crypto, look at the countries that have revalued their currencies in recent years, compared to the amount of crypto that has failed.
The Venezuelan Bolivar in 2018 and 2021, the Belarusian Ruble in 2016, the Turkish lira in 2005, the multitude of re-valuations for the Zimbabwe dollar between 2006 and 2009, the Italian lira was on the verge of a re-valuation when the euro came in.
The problem is that there's no easy way for anyone without a few billion (and thus presumed to be a sophisticated investor) to short Tether.
Yes, it's an obvious fraud, but the ways of shorting it that exist come with an even larger counterparty risk, as shown by the way that various exchanges turned out - to no-one's enormous surprise apart from the idiots who have been using them - to have been sending client funds to ponzis.
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