In a renewed transparency drive at Coinbase (NASDAQ:COIN), the exchange published a list of 50 coins under consideration to be listed in Q2. However, users have raised accusations of Coinbase supporting insider trading upon scrutinizing the move.
Renewed Accusation of Insider Trading
In December 2021, Coinbase was accused of facilitating insider trading as major players sold over $40 million worth of COIN over the course of the month.
Once again, Coinbase has been accused of facilitating insider trading. On investigation of the recently published coins, Binance USD (BUSD) turned out to be the only coin with a high liquidity and market cap of over $1 Billion.
However, prior to the announcement of these coins with low liquidity, on-chain data revealed large purchases were made in a lot of these tokens. Crypto influencer Cobie, on finding one of such wallets, wrote;
Found an ETH address that bought hundreds of thousands of dollars of tokens exclusively featured in the Coinbase Asset Listing post about 24 hours before it was published, rofl pic.twitter.com/5QlVTjl0JpAnother Twitter (NYSE:TWTR) user, Alan, shared his discovery of another insider at Coinbase who purchased $10,000 on one of the coins under consideration, stating that it is now worth more than $612k.— Cobie (@cobie) April 12, 2022
On The Flipside
- By posting a list of coins to be listed, Coinbase hoped to improve the transparency and investor confidence in their listing process.
Why You Should Care
If the purchases involved a single coin, many would have overlooked it as a coincidence. However, the accumulation of small illiquid coins has raised eyebrows about potential insider trading at Coinbase.
