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According to a high-level Coinbase executive, someone has been using its rival exchange Binance (BNB) to front-run the market for at least a year and a half. Is the Binance (BNB) team to blame for insider trading?
Coinbase's Grogan unveils two possible scenarios of "Binance's front-running"
Mr. Grogan took to Twitter today, on Jan. 23, 2023, to share his thoughts about the recent episodes in "Binance's front-running saga." According to him, the wallets that successfully front-ran GNO, RARI, ERN, TORN, RAMP and RPL listings are all connected to a single person or group of traders.
It appears that there is a pattern of Binance front-running over 18+ months
— Conor (@jconorgrogan) January 23, 2023
I found connected wallets that:
-Bought $900k Rari seconds before and dumped minutes after listing
-Bought ~78K ERN between June 17 and June 21 and sold right after listing announcement
-Did same w/ TORN https://t.co/yAolrfeHkO pic.twitter.com/VRq3vzfcgd
Third-party wallets on 1Inch Network (1INCH) DeFi and OKX (formerly OKEx) crypto exchange served as liquidity sources for the attacks. Mr. Grogan also highlighted that the only criminal case against insider-trading in crypto affected Coinbase exchange.
As covered by U.Today previously, also, at least one former OpenSea executive — Nathaniel Chastain, former product manager — faced insider NFT trading charges.
Coinbase's exec claimed that he sees two attack scenarios. First, a "rogue employee" somehow related to the listings team who had details on new asset announcements might abuse material nonpublic information (MNPI).
"Am I one of them?": Community responds to new theory
Also, a third-party trader could have created an API instrument that tracks the processes of staging or test trading before the listing of this or that token.
In the comments section to Mr. Grogan's thread, many DeFi enthusiasts shared their doubts about the possibility of Binance (BNB) being involved in this strategy.
The skeptics stated that the probability of "flipping" newly listed coins is too high. In addition, information about the listings could have been leaked by the communities and teams behind the projects that added their coins to Binance (BNB).