Coinbase hit with class-action lawsuit for Insider Trading
I remember watching the listing live on GDAX (a trading platform of Coinbase).
I realized right away that some people with insider knowledge were able to buy and move many millions worth of Bitcoin Cash in advance of the listing. Then sell it at an extremely overinflated premium as Coinbase wasn't able to deal with the liquidity. I took a screenshot of the depth chart. At one point, BCC was selling for $9,500 on Coinbase, where everywhere else it was selling for $4,000. Even the price of BCC at $4,000 was overinflated as Insiders were able to buy ridiculous amounts of BCC prior to the Coinbase listing.
Notice the comment I made on @steembusiness blog about Bitcoin Cash listing on Coinbase:
https://steemit.com/cryptocurrency/@steembusiness/bitcoin-cash-on-coinbase-will-newcomers-know-the-difference
Here is a copy of the Class Action Lawsuit filed March 1, 2018:
https://images.law.com/contrib/content/uploads/documents/403/11288/CoinbaseComplaint.pdf
Here are some text from the lawsuit:
1 . This is a class action on behalf of all Coinbase customers who placed purchase, sale or trade orders with Coinbase or the GDAX in connection with Coinbase’s launch of BCH during the period of December 19, 2017 through and including December 21, 2017 (the “Class Period”) and who suffered monetary loss as a result of Defendants’ wrongdoing (the “Class”). Excluded from the Class are Defendants, any entity owned or controlled by them, and any officer, director, employee or agent of any of the Defendants, and any heirs, assigns, or family members of any individual defendant.
67 . To date, the Company has not publicly denied that in fact insider trading occurred or the results of the purported internal investigation.
68 . Rather, in a January 9, 2018 GDAX blog, Adam White (“White”), the Company’s general manger, in an article entitled, “Bitcoin Cash Launch Retrospective”, admitted that employees were notified of Coinbase’s decision to support BCH trading on November 13, 2017, over a month before Coinbase’s customers, so that the employees had a month to craft the trading strategies to employ the moment that Coinbase enabled CTH trading. White then reiterated that employees were barred from sharing this confidential information and from buying and selling without stating whether in fact insider trading had taken place or whether the purported “internal investigation” had yielded any results
We need more trustless decentralized exchanges and atomic swaps
The only problem is getting fiat traded for cryptocurrency and vice versa. That is the main attraction to Coinbase. They don't have to rely on listing many currencies.
They should get hit with a massive fee! With the money they made it won't hurt them at all anyways.. Interesting to see if they do that again with any new crypto. They can claim it was a glitch.
I think there should be some oversight or something regarding their trading practices.
This could have been done by some whales that just got together, but if anyone from GDAX was involved with this(i bet there was) then yes they should be accountable. This is the problem with having decentralized and unregulated systems. They are great, but then there are people that are going to take advantage of it.
I stayed away from BCC at the time. I had a feeling that something fishy was going on. I'm glad I didn't get caught up in that buying frenzy and the following dump.
Wow thanks for sharing...I'm a user of Coinbase, obviously and hope that they can fix this issue. I wonder if it's real or fraud... hmm
I believe there was insider trading. I would like an independent investigation, but who will make it happen? Doubt the US government would get involved. After all government is against cryptocurrency.
Nice
Thanks for sharing @socky
Coinbase absolutely should. They are trash. I hate coinbase