Coinbase Employee Accused of Insider Trading – Files Motion to Dismiss
Last year U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filed charges against Coinbase’s former Product Manager for insider trading.
Ishan Wahi and his brother Nikhil filed a motion to dismiss the charges after their lawyers argued the tokens which the duo allegedly traded were not securities.
The motion states that SEC’s charges are “wrong” and the tokens traded by the brothers don’t fall under the definition of an “investment contract.”
Wahl’s lawyers argue that the brothers don’t have any obligations to buyers in the secondary market.
“None of the tokens were like stock. The very object of each token was to facilitate activity on the underlying platforms and, in so doing, enable each network to develop and grow.”
READ MORE: Bitcoin: Trader Warns of Imminent Correction
Nikhil Wahi was responsible for upcoming public listing announcements for cryptocurrency on Coinbase. According to SEC’s charges, the ex-employee shared confidential information with his brother and a third person.
They bought the tokens before their listings using anonymous accounts, which resulted in total gains of around $1.5 million. Last month Nikhil Wahi pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 10 months in prison.
Alexander Stefanov
Reporter at CoinsPress
Alex is Editor-in-Chief of Coinspress and co-founder of Millennial Media Group, with nearly a decade of experience covering financial markets - crypto first, then everything else. It started in 2016 with Bitcoin. Like most people at the time, he didn't fully understand it - so he kept digging. Blockchain, tokenomics, the projects, the cycles. That curiosity never stopped, and eventually pulled him into traditional markets too: equities, commodities, macro. Not because he left crypto behind, but because you can't properly understand one without the other. What drives him is straightforward: he wants to know why something is happening, not just that it's happening. Most market coverage stops at the headline - price up, price down, here's a chart. Alex finds that kind of reporting actively unhelpful. If you walk away from an article without understanding the mechanism behind the move, what did you actually learn? He holds a degree in Tourism from New Bulgarian University - not the most obvious path into financial markets, but markets have a way of pulling in people who are simply too curious to stay out. He has authored over 200 in-depth analyses and more than 10,000 articles across crypto and traditional finance. He still thinks every day in markets teaches him something new. That's probably why he hasn't stopped.
