Wall Street loves efficiency. But even the fastest HFT desks would blush at a 12-second trade that netted millions. That’s what two brothers allegedly pulled off on Ethereum front running blockchain transactions before anyone else could blink.
Here’s the part that should make you laugh or cry. Their lawyers say it’s not even fraud. Why? Because “the blockchain has no rules.” That’s the crypto ethos in a nutshell. If you can code it, you can take it. Front-running gets you perp walked in traditional markets. In cryptocurrency, it grants you a yacht named “Decentralized Justice” and Discord followers. This is a casino without a pit boss, let us call it that. Offshore exchanges, mixers, and shell corporations are all just the same old strategy wrapped in new digital terminology.
However, someone on Wall Street declares, “This time it is mature,” at the end of every cycle. Right. Mature enough to manage a hedge fund like a frat house. Fraud is not the only threat. The appearance of sophistication is what it is. Convincing intelligent people that cryptocurrency was not gambling was its biggest trick. Perhaps we should acknowledge that this is still Vegas only the chips light in the dark and stop acting like this is finance 2.0 if a 12-second theft can upend markets.
