alt Hacker NewsI was curious how a man in Switzerland gets charged in the US for a placing bets on a site that doesn't allow the US to participate.
The short answer seems to be that he stole private information from a US company and used that information to enrich himself. And then got that charge enhanced with things like wire fraud and transacting on systems involving US currency.
And another commentor suggests that punishing insider traders in a step towards legitimzing and regulating prediction markets in the US.
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You can charge anyone in the world with anything, the trouble is getting a judge to agree with you and getting your hands on the person you're charging.
The first problem doesn't seem to be all that hard in the US (unless the inside traders are part of the US government, of course), the second problem can be as simple as having Google organise an all-expenses-paid team activity to bait the subject into jurisdiction.
If the basis for their charges really is just that he traded in dollars, then this is yet another example why nobody should trust Americans and their currency when it comes to trade. I hope they can come up with something better than that.
> transacting on systems involving US currency.
Transacting on systems involving a currency (USDC) that is pegged to a US currency.
Pretty sure he sold Swiss Francs for USDC and deposited those onto Polymarket (after running them through mixers -- hence the money laundering charges).
The interesting part is that he got charged with insider trading. A few attorneys on bluesky have pointed out that this is a novel use of this law since previously the trading occurred on regulated markets (e.g. SEC or CFTC regulated markets like stock markets and commodities/futures exchanges).
A little bit of an open secret, but insider trading is a large part of what makes prediction markets valuable to society on the whole.
However, it requires a small set of people to lose money so that the rest of us can have a clearer picture of the future.