Former Coinbase Manager Settles with SEC over Insider Trading

Hey Peeps!

On April 3rd, a document was filed into U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington and stated that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and former Product Manager of Coinbase, Ishan Wahi, have “an agreement in principle” to settle all criminal charges.

The document claims that the SEC and Nikhil Wahi, brother of Ishan, is also currently in talks to settle charges.

The court document was filed to give the Wahi brothers time to finalize the terms of their settlement.

Here is a direct link to the court document: https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.wawd.312176/gov.uscourts.wawd.312176.103.0_1.pdf

Ishan Wahi, Nakhil Wahi, and Sameer Ramani are all being charged with Insider Trading for allegedly using confidential information, obtained from Coinbase, to profit off new token listings.

The sum of these ill-gotten profits are alleged to be more than $1 million.

To my knowledge, this is the first case in history of insider trading in the cryptocurrency industry.

“At this time, the SEC has an agreement in principle with Ishan Wahi to resolve all of the SEC’s claims in this matter. The SEC and Nikhil Wahi are also in good faith discussions that may resolve the SEC’s claims. Any settlement recommended by SEC staff must be reviewed within the SEC and approved by the SEC’s Commissioners before it may be submitted to the Court for approval, a process than can take a number of weeks.”

- Local Counsel for Defendants Ishan Wahi and Nikhil Wahi

Seeing this news and remembering that the SEC is currently going after Coinbase for securities fraud and various other charges, I think it isn’t too much a of a leap to suggest that the former Coinbase manager is going to be used by the SEC to acquire information for their assault on crypto.

The former Coinbase manager may have important information that the SEC was not privy to and this might help them in their case against Coinbase and many other crypto companies.

I could be off the mark here, and I am sometimes like most people, but I am not sure why they would be settling with defendants who basically got caught red-handed and trying to flee the country.

What are your thoughts on this news?

Do you think there is more insider trading going on than we actually think?

What can be done to prevent these kinds of opportunities from being exploited?

See ya!

:)