Ex-Coinbase Product Manager Pleads Not Guilty in Crypto Insider Trading Case: Report

Ishan Wahi and two associates are accused of making as much as $1.5 million from sharing information about the exchange's plans to list new tokens.

AccessTimeIconAug 3, 2022 at 5:39 p.m. UTC
Updated May 11, 2023 at 5:10 p.m. UTC
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Former Coinbase (COIN) product manager Ishan Wahi has pleaded not guilty to federal charges of insider trading, according to a Reuters report on Wednesday.

  • Ishan Wahi is accused of sharing information about which crypto assets the exchange would be listing next with his brother Nikhil Wahi and Sameer Ramani prior to the actual listing. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) also brought charges against the three tied to the same insider trading allegations.
  • Ishan Wahi allegedly shared information about at least 14 different listings at Coinbase, and the defendants made up to $1.5 million through the scheme, according to the Justice Department, though the SEC put the figure at closer to $1.1 million.
  • This is the second insider trading case involving crypto that the Department of Justice has pursued.
  • The case has also attracted attention because the SEC named nine tokens as securities in the proceedings, albeit without charging the issuers or Coinbase for listing them.

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Nelson Wang

Nelson Wang was CoinDesk's news editor for the East Coast. He holds BTC and ETH above CoinDesk's disclosure threshold of $1,000.


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