7 ms·

Why wouldn't they? The risk of getting caught is virtually zero if you do it right and even if you get caught you get a slap on the wrist and a fine at best. It

Why wouldn't they? The risk of getting caught is virtually zero if you do it right and even if you get caught you get a slap on the wrist and a fine at best. It's just pathetic that for a company which so hard tries to legitimize crypto they have issues like this over and over again. The inherent nature of a "get rich quick" ecosystem where the incentives to pull all kinds of shady and illegal actions are too high and the repercussions are basically non-existent.

Drakim 5y ago
In the world of cryptocurrency, even the wrist slap isn't a given. To me, cryptocurrency has been a very cool social experiment in what pure unregulated free market capitalism would work like in practice. Supposedly in place of regulations, companies would live on reputation and trustworthy business practices. If you use poisonous lead in your soup cans, people will stop buying your soup when word gets out, no need to regulate, companies will self-regulate to stay profitable and relevant. Reputation and trust is probably the most important thing Coinbase can hoard, it's the one way a legitimate company that acts like an exchange and/or bank for cryptocurrency can use to rise above all the scams and dubious services that's going on in the cryptocurrency world. And yet here they are pissing it down the drain for easy short-term profits. Surprise surprise. The truth is, trust, reputation and even human lives are just input values in the big equation of profits. The free market will always optimize for the best option, even if that option is an overall net loss for humanity.
- beaconstudios 5y ago
  The experiment wasn't even necessary - the Gilded Age was a libertarian's paradise with the gold standard and very little government regulation. What do we most associate with this era? Robber barons, utility monopolies screwing people over with ruthless business practices, confidence men and literal snake oil quack medicine. I genuinely can't think of a good (ie moral) reason to support the idea given how it is predicted to, and has been shown to, play out.
  - logicchains 5y ago
    >The experiment wasn't even necessary - the Gilded Age was a libertarian'paradise with the gold standard and very little government regulation. What do we most associate with this era? Robber barons, utility monopolies screwing people over with ruthless business practices, confidence men and literal snake oil quack medicine. The rate of economic growth and improvement in people's living standards was much higher back then than it is now. Similarly the average adult back then was much healthier than the average adult nowadays, who is likely overweight or obese with some chronic illness. In spite of the vast amount of pills modern people take. So healthcare hasn't necessarily improved much either.
    - soco 5y ago
      I don't know what the Gilded Age was (and too lazy to search) but, I quote "Over the past 160 years, life expectancy (from birth) in the United States has risen from 39.4 years in 1860, to 78.9 years in 2020"[1] so please do show some support for the affirmation "the average adult back then was much healthier". Unless you mean they all died healthy around 40 years of age - as in, they were totally healthy until 40 then the first illness killed them clean. [1]https://www.statista.com/statistics/1040079/life-expectancy-united-states-all-time/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1040079/life-expectancy-...
      - tsimionescu 5y ago
        While your point is absolutely true, note that life expectancy shouldn't be taken as the literal age most people die. It is the expected value of your age at death. Just like the expected value of a coin flip being heads is 0.5, but no coin is ever 0.5 heads. Life expectancy at birth in the times before modern medicine has always been dragged down significantly by the huge rate of infant mortality. It was more common for a family to have 1-2 dead small children in their past than not. People who lived past 5 or 10 or so would often live to see 70 or so, and 80 or 90 year olds were not unheard of.
        soco 5y ago
logicchains 5y ago
Economically speaking insider trading represents a net positive for the market as it brings information onto the market sooner, allows it to reach a better price sooner. The only people hurt by insider trading are those to whom the person doing insider trading has a fiduciary duty, which for a Coinbase employee would be Coinbase itself. Other markets like commodities and real estate have gotten along perfectly fine without any insider trading laws.
- lexapro 5y ago
  Anyone that loses money they wouldn't have lost otherwise is hurt by insider trading. And if you make it legal, people will try anything to gain insider information.
- lvl102 5y ago
  None of this is true. Don’t compare some shitcoin with nonexistent liquidity to real-world commodities.
  - cuteboy19 5y ago
    There is no economic utility in this system to begin with. So even if this were true, they would be optimising a quantity that would eventually be multiplied by 0 anyways.
- tsimionescu 5y ago
  > Economically speaking insider trading represents a net positive for the market as it brings information onto the market sooner, allows it to reach a better price sooner. No, economically speaking insider trading just hurts the market, as all free market models work only in so far as all actors have equal access to information. Unequal information makes the market less efficient. Hidden information that is not used in trades doesn't affect market efficiency, as all actors get a chance to decide a new price once the information becomes public. > The only people hurt by insider trading are those to whom the person doing insider trading has a fiduciary duty, which for a Coinbase employee would be Coinbase itself. No, the people most hurt by insider trading are the cpunter-parties to those trades, who are acting on inferior information. It is a type of fraud - I'm acting as if the publicly known information is up to date, but in fact I know something the rest of the market doesn't about the value of the good I'm trading. It's like selling beans that have been publicly shown to be magical, while I happen to know the public show was staged and they are in fact normal beans.

Drakim 5y ago

In the world of cryptocurrency, even the wrist slap isn't a given. To me, cryptocurrency has been a very cool social experiment in what pure unregulated free market capitalism would work like in practice. Supposedly in place of regulations, companies would live on reputation and trustworthy business practices. If you use poisonous lead in your soup cans, people will stop buying your soup when word gets out, no need to regulate, companies will self-regulate to stay profitable and relevant. Reputation and trust is probably the most important thing Coinbase can hoard, it's the one way a legitimate company that acts like an exchange and/or bank for cryptocurrency can use to rise above all the scams and dubious services that's going on in the cryptocurrency world. And yet here they are pissing it down the drain for easy short-term profits. Surprise surprise. The truth is, trust, reputation and even human lives are just input values in the big equation of profits. The free market will always optimize for the best option, even if that option is an overall net loss for humanity.

beaconstudios 5y ago
The experiment wasn't even necessary - the Gilded Age was a libertarian's paradise with the gold standard and very little government regulation. What do we most associate with this era? Robber barons, utility monopolies screwing people over with ruthless business practices, confidence men and literal snake oil quack medicine. I genuinely can't think of a good (ie moral) reason to support the idea given how it is predicted to, and has been shown to, play out.
- logicchains 5y ago
  >The experiment wasn't even necessary - the Gilded Age was a libertarian'paradise with the gold standard and very little government regulation. What do we most associate with this era? Robber barons, utility monopolies screwing people over with ruthless business practices, confidence men and literal snake oil quack medicine. The rate of economic growth and improvement in people's living standards was much higher back then than it is now. Similarly the average adult back then was much healthier than the average adult nowadays, who is likely overweight or obese with some chronic illness. In spite of the vast amount of pills modern people take. So healthcare hasn't necessarily improved much either.
  - soco 5y ago
    I don't know what the Gilded Age was (and too lazy to search) but, I quote "Over the past 160 years, life expectancy (from birth) in the United States has risen from 39.4 years in 1860, to 78.9 years in 2020"[1] so please do show some support for the affirmation "the average adult back then was much healthier". Unless you mean they all died healthy around 40 years of age - as in, they were totally healthy until 40 then the first illness killed them clean. [1]https://www.statista.com/statistics/1040079/life-expectancy-united-states-all-time/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1040079/life-expectancy-...
    - tsimionescu 5y ago
      While your point is absolutely true, note that life expectancy shouldn't be taken as the literal age most people die. It is the expected value of your age at death. Just like the expected value of a coin flip being heads is 0.5, but no coin is ever 0.5 heads. Life expectancy at birth in the times before modern medicine has always been dragged down significantly by the huge rate of infant mortality. It was more common for a family to have 1-2 dead small children in their past than not. People who lived past 5 or 10 or so would often live to see 70 or so, and 80 or 90 year olds were not unheard of.
      - soco 5y ago

logicchains 5y ago

Economically speaking insider trading represents a net positive for the market as it brings information onto the market sooner, allows it to reach a better price sooner. The only people hurt by insider trading are those to whom the person doing insider trading has a fiduciary duty, which for a Coinbase employee would be Coinbase itself. Other markets like commodities and real estate have gotten along perfectly fine without any insider trading laws.

lexapro 5y ago
Anyone that loses money they wouldn't have lost otherwise is hurt by insider trading. And if you make it legal, people will try anything to gain insider information.
lvl102 5y ago
None of this is true. Don’t compare some shitcoin with nonexistent liquidity to real-world commodities.
- cuteboy19 5y ago
  There is no economic utility in this system to begin with. So even if this were true, they would be optimising a quantity that would eventually be multiplied by 0 anyways.
tsimionescu 5y ago
> Economically speaking insider trading represents a net positive for the market as it brings information onto the market sooner, allows it to reach a better price sooner. No, economically speaking insider trading just hurts the market, as all free market models work only in so far as all actors have equal access to information. Unequal information makes the market less efficient. Hidden information that is not used in trades doesn't affect market efficiency, as all actors get a chance to decide a new price once the information becomes public. > The only people hurt by insider trading are those to whom the person doing insider trading has a fiduciary duty, which for a Coinbase employee would be Coinbase itself. No, the people most hurt by insider trading are the cpunter-parties to those trades, who are acting on inferior information. It is a type of fraud - I'm acting as if the publicly known information is up to date, but in fact I know something the rest of the market doesn't about the value of the good I'm trading. It's like selling beans that have been publicly shown to be magical, while I happen to know the public show was staged and they are in fact normal beans.