First crypto insider trading case ends with 10-month sentence

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In what was called crypto’s first-ever insider trading case, the brother of a former Coinbase employee has been sentenced to 10 months in prison for conspiracy to commit wire fraud.

As reported by Reuters, Nikhil Wahi, confessed last year to making trades using confidential information passed to him by his brother Ishan, a product manager at the San Francisco-based exchange.

Specifically, Federal prosecutors in Manhattan allege that Ishan fed his brother details about assets that Coinbase was planning to list. Ishan has pleaded not guilty while the pair’s accomplice Sameer Ramani is still on the run.

More accusations of insider trading

Back in July when Wahi was first charged, prosecutors said it was the first insider trading case involving cryptocurrency. However, accusations of insider trading have been leveled at a number of other firms.

In July last year, Axie Infinity co-founder Trung Nguyen denied that he engaged in insider trading. He claimed that funds were actually transferred to steady the company’s finances, provide liquidity, and outwit those who might look to profit from a $600 million hack on the game’s parent company Sky Mavis.

Shortly before this, a former Huobi manager was accused in Hong Kong of running an insider trading operation that netted him $5 million in Tether (USDT).

And also in June last year, OpenSea’s head of product Nathaniel Chastain was accused of buying up NFTs and placing them on the homepage, selling them on when visibility and demand skyrocketed.

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