Traditional “front running” is trading of stocks or other financial assets using privileged information about an upcoming transaction that is anticipated to significantly impact its price. For example, brokers could front run trades by using insider knowledge regarding their firm’s imminent issuance of a buy or sell recommendation to clients, a move expected to influence the asset’s price. Trading on this kind of non-public information is illegal in most jurisdictions, not only because it’s unfair to other market participants but also because it degrades the integrity of financial markets and erodes investor trust. In the often “Wild West” of crypto markets, given that all too often lawmakers haven’t caught up…
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Judge Keeps CZ in U.S. Pending Review
Following last week’s landmark settlement, prosecutors argue flight risk
As we noted two days ago in Will Congress Finally Do Its Job?, the operator of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, Binance, pleaded guilty and agreed to pay $4.3 billion to resolve the Justice Department’s investigation into violations related to the Bank Secrecy Act, failure to register as a money transmitting business, and the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. Additionally, Binance’s founder and CEO, Changpeng “CZ” Zhao also pleaded guilty to failing to maintain an effective anti-money laundering (AML) program, resigned as CEO of Binance and personally paid a $50 million fine to the Commodity Futures Trade Commission (CFTC) for “intentionally sabotaging and subverting Binance’s superficial compliance controls, including controls designed…
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Will Congress Finally Do Its Job?
The executive and judicial branches have filled the legislature’s crypto void – but this could end in 2024
Congress seems drugged and inert most of the time. Even when the problems it ignores build up to crises and erupt in strikes, riots, and demonstrations, it has not moved. Its idea of meeting a problem is to hold hearings or, in extreme cases, to appoint a commission. – Representative Shirley Chisholm, writing in her book Unbought and Unbossed The U.S. Constitution vests in Congress the power to create laws and in the executive branch the responsibility of implementing and enforcing those laws, while the judicial branch interprets laws and assures they do not violate the Constitution. This vaunted system of checks and balances is designed to ensure a…
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:( , of, oof – don’t think I have anything particular?
The banality of Bankman-Fried and his FTX/Alameda cozeners
Political philosopher Hannah Arendt’s 1963 book Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil became a classic in part by introducing the concept in noted its subtitle. She argued that the full context of Eichmann’s actions in helping organize and carry out the Holocaust weren’t fully elucidated by his trial, which thus obscured, “the lesson that this long course in human wickedness had taught us—the lesson of the fearsome, word-and-thought-defying banality of evil”. Not to say that what FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried is currently on trial for rises to the level of evil, but I’ve been struck over and over by the banality and seemingly utter disregard for…
