Originally published at: OpenSea's head of product faces 40 years for NFT insider trading | Boing Boing
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It’s almost as if the whole Web3 space of NFTs and cryptocurrencies attracts grifters, criminals, and chancers.
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I liked the observation that since every other crypto marketplace allows - indeed thrives - on insider trading, it doesn’t seem unreasonable that this guy should assume that OpenSea would as well…
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STOP CALLING THEM THAT!
ETA: am I wrong for suggesting the man be let off free? This charge only legitimizes crypto. Let the grifters grift one another. Start going after members of congress pleeease!
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“Oh. . . so there are rules?”
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Just when I thought crypto and NFTs couldn’t be any more confusing!
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A lot of the reason that crypto exists at all is because they believe that somehow it’s not affected by existing laws regarding fraud, or anything else. Personally I feel that the thing that is going to end crypto fastest is stuff like this - no new regulation or law needed,
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My feeling are similar to everyone else’s here. What…does legitimate trade in NFTs even look like? I guess I thought it was weird when NFTs were being sold for charity, and the charitable org minting them got like $300 per, then they were immediately turned over for tens of thousands. Like, why wouldn’t the charity have just auctioned them off for the “real” 5 digit price? were they…not allowed to? With something with absolutely no intrinsic value, what does any of that mean? Is there something magical that says the original minted price has to be low, but then the first resale price can be whatever?
feel free to never answer any of these questions.
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Replace “magical” with “grift”.
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Right? Like if someone started a thread called the BoingBoing Money Club, and we all just started sending money to each other if we posted stuff meeting certain criteria. Then someone sends me a private message saying HMSGoose was going to meet criteria tomorrow, and I’d get the money instead if I acted first. And then the United States Government sends us summons?!
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In your example there are a few things that might lead to government intervention- first off it sounds like it is probably an illegal lottery, then there is the fraud aspect of it on top of that. There are a lot of existing laws around lotteries, and some of those laws involve manipulation of the results.
In the case of this nft guy, what he did would be covered under existing laws against fraud, market manipulation and self dealing. In a lot of these cases the government doesn’t care what the valuation of the asset being traded is - they are much more concerned with how was arrived at
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It’s, you know, a PYRAMID SHAPED tool 
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Oh yes, they absolutely would
It’s not like nobody ever thought of that before
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Yes. Real (non-grifter, often desperate) people end up suffering from this crap. These people should be treated just like any other rip-off artist.
Vide:
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[…]
OpenSea’s co-founder and CEO Devin Finzer commissioned a third party to investigate incidents of insider trades last year.
“As the world’s leading web3 marketplace for NFTs, trust and integrity are core to everything we do,” a company spokesperson told The Register in a statement.
“When we learned of Nate’s behavior,” they further claimed, “we initiated an investigation and ultimately asked him to leave the company. His behavior was in violation of our employee policies and in direct conflict with our core values and principles.”
[…]
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It’s not a Ponzi Scheme, it’s a Ponzi Scheme on a blockchain on the Internet!
It’s completely different. (Courts: No.)
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It’s true! If you insert the words “the appearance of” in there!
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