Matt Levine pointed out in a past article that the real danger of insider trading are company insiders being incentivised to damage the company to make a quick buck.
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> insiders being incentivised to damage the company
I'd like to emphasize that this incentive doesn't have to be an accidental find by the insider either: The "market" can end up facilitating anonymous crowd-sourced bribery by enemies or competitors, who create the potential for profit knowing that eventually an insider will take the other end of the implied deal.
Every time I see someone dismissing these kinds of issues--especially someone whose salary depends on not-understanding it [0] --I imagine how their tune would change if the shoe was on the other foot. For example, if someone created a "prediction market" where people could anonymously bet on unusual deaths or serious injuries of... prediction-market executives.
Luigi, let’s-a go!!!
How is it different than shorting or buying put options and then damaging the company? The tools are already there.
Yes, that's why insider trading is illegal.
What other GTA missions and Mossad operations should we democratize with a small personal computerized device?
https://youtu.be/RmUQptXfiWs?t=485
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_Lebanon_electronic_device...
The difference is one is illegal, the other one is not.
Artificially influencing a stock's price is illegal by itself, and there's probably about a half dozen other charges that could be tacked in this scheme, possibly including extremely serious ones like wire fraud which gets tacked on pretty much every crime involving digital tech.
Maybe there should be a maximum betting limit the same way there should be an election contribution limit — let's say something like 10x the federal minimum wage or whatever so if you are betting under USD 75.5, it is A ok but once you cross this number, we require public disclosures, no hiding behind LLC, natural persons only, KYC, the whole shebang.
Actually, now that I think about it, let's get rid of the minimum, there should be no minimum, all bets even five cents must be fully disclosed and attributed to natural persons, no hiding behind "corporations are people, my friend" nonsense.
I was responding to this argument:
>>the real danger of insider trading are company insiders being incentivised to damage the company to make a quick buck.
Damaging the company is illegal as well. Making things illegal doesn't magically stop people from doing what they have incentives to do.