ChainCatcher news, according to Cointelegraph, YouTube influencer MrBeast is under investigation for connections to over 50 potential insider trading-related crypto wallets, which have collectively gained more than $23 million in profits.Previous news, YouTube influencer Jimmy Donaldson (MrBeast) has been accused of promoting and then selling off multiple low-market-cap crypto project tokens, earning over $10 million in profits.

ChainCatcher news, according to a report by Reuters, Elon Musk and his electric vehicle company Tesla (TSLA.O) have successfully won the dismissal of a federal lawsuit that accused them of defrauding investors by exaggerating the value of the cryptocurrency Dogecoin and engaging in insider trading, resulting in billions of dollars in losses. U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein in Manhattan issued this ruling on Thursday evening.Investors accused the world's richest man of profiting from trades at their expense through Twitter posts, an appearance on NBC's "Saturday Night Live" in 2021, and other promotional stunts, using multiple Dogecoin wallets controlled by him or Tesla. They also claimed that Musk deliberately inflated the price of Dogecoin by over 36,000% over two years, only to let it crash, while he and Tesla often timed their trades based on Musk's public statements and activities regarding Dogecoin.However, Hellerstein stated that Musk's tweets about "Dogecoin being the currency of the future on Earth, usable to purchase Tesla cars, or sent to the moon by his company SpaceX" were "idealized and exaggerated, not facts, and easily falsifiable," meaning that no rational investor could rely on these tweets to file a securities fraud lawsuit, and thus "could not comprehend" the market manipulation and insider trading allegations raised by the investors. Hellerstein dismissed the lawsuit with prejudice, meaning it cannot be refiled. The investors initially sought $258 billion in damages and amended their complaint four times over two years. In seeking to dismiss the lawsuit, Musk's lawyers argued that his "harmless and often silly tweets" posed no issue. They also stated that there was no evidence that Musk owned two wallets for suspicious trading, nor was there evidence that he or Tesla had ever sold Dogecoin.

ChainCatcher news, according to CoinDesk, crypto venture capital giant Polychain has accused its former employee Niraj Pant of engaging in behind-the-scenes deals with the invested project Eclipse Labs that violate the fund's policies.According to three insiders and internal documents from Eclipse reviewed by CoinDesk, former CEO of Eclipse Labs Neel Somani quietly allocated 5% of the upcoming Eclipse crypto token to Pant in September 2022—just days after Pant instructed Polychain to lead a $6 million pre-seed round investment in the company.The final allocation was reduced to 1.33%, valued at approximately $13.3 million based on the fully diluted valuation from the most recent private investment round. (According to sources close to Eclipse Labs, the company's recent funding round set the fully diluted valuation of its token at $1 billion.)"Polychain only became aware of the financial relationship between Eclipse and Niraj Pant after Mr. Pant left the company," a Polychain spokesperson said in an email to CoinDesk. "Polychain has strict policies and procedures regarding employees serving in advisory roles. After Mr. Pant left Polychain, the company discovered he had violated its policies and conducted an investigation."

ChainCatcher news, according to a report by Cointelegraph, based on data from the blockchain analysis platform Bubblemaps, the meme coin Mother Iggy (MOTHER) has "significant insider activity." According to a post published on the X platform, over 20% of the total supply of MOTHER was purchased directly from the issuing team by insiders, with tokens worth over $2 million sold as of the time of writing.Specifically, on May 29, an insider sold approximately 10% of the total supply of the token. This insider owns an account starting with "JEET," and is said to have purchased over 109 million MOTHER through over-the-counter transactions, most of which were subsequently sold off.According to Solscan data, this user received 127.5 million MOTHER from the deployer account. They then sent these funds to several other wallets, with at least one wallet selling 20 million MOTHER to the Raydium liquidity pool through multiple transactions.

ChainCatcher news, according to The Block, a report from investment bank TD Cowen states that after recently winning the insider trading lawsuit against Coinbase, SEC Chairman Gary Gensler is expected to continue filing cryptocurrency cases.Last week, the Washington District Court made a ruling favorable to the SEC in an insider trading case. Therefore, it is expected that Gensler will continue to file lawsuits for at least the next two years, until the end of his term (June 2026).

ChainCatcher news, according to CoinDesk, the r/CryptoCurrency community on Reddit, which has 6.9 million users, removed the moderators of the subreddit trading the native token MOON just minutes before announcing the decision to end its community points program last Tuesday.MOON is an ERC-20 community points token that serves as a token incentive for users posting or commenting in the r/CryptoCurrency subreddit, and these tokens can be freely traded, tipped, or spent within the community for various purposes. Following Reddit's announcement, the token dropped over 85% to $0.0198.Regarding the handling of the MOON token, core contributor and founder of MoonsDust u/mellon98 stated that they are waiting for Reddit's decision on whether to transfer the contract ownership to the community or to move it to a burn address.

ChainCatcher news, according to an announcement from the U.S. Department of Justice, former OpenSea product manager Nathaniel Chastain has been sentenced to three months in prison, fined $50,000, and ordered to forfeit illegally obtained Ethereum. Additionally, according to the U.S. Department of Justice, Nathaniel Chastain will face another three months of home confinement and three years of supervised release after serving his sentence.Previous news, in May of this year, Nathaniel Chastain was convicted of fraud and money laundering on Wednesday local time, for using insider information about which assets would be displayed on his homepage to trade NFTs, illegally profiting over $50,000.

ChainCatcher news, according to Decrypt, Elon Musk's lawyer Alex Shapiro filed a motion to dismiss the class action lawsuit against Musk for insider trading related to Dogecoin (DOGE) brought by Dogecoin investors.The lawyer stated that posting supportive comments about cryptocurrency or sharing interesting images related to cryptocurrency on Twitter is not illegal. The allegations are based on Dogecoin sold from digital wallets that have no factual connection to Musk or Tesla. The lawsuit was initially filed last June, accusing Musk of market manipulation and insider trading, seeking $258 billion in damages.

ChainCatcher news, according to a report by Bloomberg citing a survey from crypto analytics firm Solidus Labs, 56% of ERC-20 tokens are suspected of insider trading when they first list on the three major centralized cryptocurrency exchanges. The report examined the listing announcements of 234 ERC-20 tokens on the world's largest three centralized exchanges, and on-chain data showed that 411 transactions within the scope of the investigation were related to over 100 insiders. Many entities purchased tokens on DeFi trading platforms before the tokens were listed on CEX, profiting by selling these tokens after the announcement and price increase.It is estimated that insiders profited a total of approximately $24 million from illegal trading. Chen Arad, co-founder of Solidus Labs, stated in an interview with Bloomberg: "If more than half of all listed tokens are not trustable tokens, then this is an inefficient market. This issue is one of the barriers to elevating cryptocurrency to a new level."Solidus Labs was founded in 2018 by Chen Arad, along with former Goldman Sachs vice president Kumar, who was responsible for building trading systems, and former Goldman Sachs engineer, now CEO of the company, Meir. Arad stated that the company currently has about 100 employees and approximately 80 clients, including cryptocurrency exchanges and market makers, as well as traditional financial institutions and government law enforcement agencies. (Source link)

ChainCatcher news, Musk denied the "whale" allegations involving Dogecoin in a letter. Musk's lawyer stated that the plaintiff incorrectly associated Musk with a specific wallet and insisted that the allegations are "baseless." Furthermore, the lawyer clearly pointed out that posting supportive comments about the market cap of Dogecoin or humorous images on Twitter does not involve any illegal activities.ChainCatcher previously reported that Musk was accused of participating in insider trading and price manipulation activities related to Dogecoin, harming retail investors. (source link)

ChainCatcher news, documents from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) show that former Coinbase product manager Ishan Wahi and his brother Nikhil Wahi have agreed to settle the insider trading charges brought against them by the SEC, and they are required to pay disgorged profits and pre-judgment interest.The SEC filed a lawsuit on July 21, 2022, in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington, accusing Ishan Wahi of helping coordinate the public listing announcement of the platform while employed at Coinbase, including which crypto assets would be made available for trading. According to the complaint, Coinbase regarded such information as confidential and warned its employees not to trade based on that information or disclose it to others. However, at least from June 2021 to April 2022, Ishan violated his duties by repeatedly disclosing the timing and content of upcoming listing announcements to his brother Nikhil Wahi and his friend Sameer Ramani. (source link)

ChainCatcher news, former Coinbase product manager Ishan Wahi was sentenced to two years in prison on Tuesday, marking the first insider trading case involving cryptocurrency. According to prosecutors, the three individuals made $1.5 million by trading 55 digital assets before the listing announcements from June 2021 to April 2022. (Source link）

ChainCatcher news, former product manager of the NFT marketplace OpenSea, Nathaniel Chastain, was convicted on Wednesday local time of fraud and money laundering for trading NFTs based on insider information about which assets would be displayed on his homepage, illegally profiting over $50,000. (Reuters)

ChainCatcher news, court documents show that the trial date for former OpenSea product head Nathaniel Chastain has been set for April 24, where he will face charges. When the case goes to trial, Chastain will face charges of wire fraud and money laundering.In a memorandum submitted yesterday, U.S. District Judge Jesse M. Furman stated, "The argument in the Chastain case regarding the use of the term 'insider trading' is of no practical significance." The court may also hear directly from Chastain to explain how he believes his actions affected his former employer.Previously, Chastain was accused of secretly purchasing NFTs using confidential information from OpenSea and selling them for illegal profits. The U.S. Department of Justice stated that the case against Chastain is the first involving insider trading related to digital assets. However, his lawyers argue that since the relevant assets are neither defined as securities nor as commodities, they do not meet the definition of insider trading. (source link)

ChainCatcher news, according to monitoring by 0xScope, one of the hottest meme coins in the current market, PEPE, saw over 20 addresses spend no more than 0.02 ETH to purchase large amounts of PEPE tokens within 5 minutes of the pool being created on Uniswap. After aggregating and analyzing the holdings of these addresses, 0xScope found that they collectively hold 50 trillion PEPE tokens, accounting for approximately 11.9% of the total supply, with a current total value exceeding 17 million USD.Due to the early buying time and the fact that the funds for these addresses mostly come from non-custodial trading platforms like Fixedfloat that can obscure fund flows, 0xScope does not rule out the possibility that these addresses belong to insiders. (source link)