Two Robinhood engineers charged with insider trading using Hyperliquid perpetuals
U.S. prosecutors allege two engineers used confidential Robinhood token listing data to front-run announcements using Hyperliquid perpetual futures.
Two Robinhood HOOD$110.54·Market Closed engineers allegedly stole confidential information from their employer to trade perpetual futures on Hyperliquid for personal benefit, according to Jamie McDonald, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York.
“Misappropriating confidential information to trade in the derivatives markets for personal benefit is illegal,” McDonald said in a statement on Tuesday. “That is exactly what we allege Hefu Chai and Huaisong Xiang have done.”
The case puts trading on decentralized derivatives platforms within the same enforcement framework prosecutors use for other trading based on confidential corporate information. The use of perpetual futures did not shield the alleged trades from commodities and wire-fraud laws, prosecutors said.
The filing against Chai and the one against Xiang claim the two were designated “Coin Aware Individuals,” a group with access to a private Slack channel containing information about planned listings. Robinhood’s policy barred those employees from trading the tokens on any platform before, and for 24 hours after, a public listing announcement.