Crypto Scam Criminal Trial Tests 'Code Is Law' Claim by Trader

A jailed trader accused of stealing $110 million on the Mango Markets exchange faces a criminal trial this week that will test the reach of a US crackdown on cryptocurrencies. From a report: Prosecutors charged Avraham Eisenberg with manipulating Mango Markets futures contracts on Oct. 11, 2022, to boost the price of swaps by 1,300% in 20 minutes. He then 'borrowed' from the exchange against the inflated value of those contracts, a move the government claims was a theft. Jury selection begins Monday in New York federal court, where groundbreaking crypto cases have played out. FTX co-founder Sam Bankman-Fried was sentenced there last month to 25 years in prison for orchestrating a multibillion-dollar scheme, while Terraform Labs Pte. and co-founder Do Kwon were found liable Friday for fraud in civil trial over the firm's 2022 collapse, which wiped out $40 billion in investor assets.

Eisenberg, a self-described 'applied game theorist,' claims his actions weren't theft at all. Rather, he says, he legally exploited a weakness in the decentralized finance application. The trial will apparently be the first time a US criminal jury will weigh what type of 'DeFi' transactions are legal. In the crypto world, where digital blockchains govern who owns what, the virtual ecosystem is built around the notion that 'code is law.' It means that if something isn't explicitly forbidden by terms of a crypto platform, then government can't intercede. But prosecutors say those rules can't protect traders against possible criminal charges for market manipulation or fraud.

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