Ex-OpenSea Exec Nathaniel Chastain urges US court to quash insider trading charges

Lawyers for Nathaniel Chastain, former OpenSea chief of product, have filed a motion to dismiss an indictment against him on alleged charges of wire fraud and money laundering, claiming he used insider information that included non-fungible tokens. (NFT) collections were going to happen. Featured on OpenSea. According to court documents, Chastain’s legal team has argued that NFTs are not classified as securities or commodities. Since insider trading refers to the use of privileged, non-public information to trade securities, such charges cannot be imposed on a former employee of OpenC.

the filing says That the attempt to prosecute Chastain “should have failed for several independent reasons” before the said reasons could be uncovered. Defendant’s lawyers maintain that NFTs are neither securities nor commodities and say that the government agrees, adding that decades of legal development in the past have perpetuated the allegation of insider trading.

The filing reads, “However, the rubbish is that NFTs are neither securities nor commodities. And the government agrees. Thus, we are left with the matter of first impressions on several fronts. Will the government carpenter’s strings? Can proceed on fraud. Principle of insider trading in absence of any allegation involving securities or commodity trading? Government, of course, says yes. Supreme Court and 40 years of insider trading precedent says no.”

The lawyers also claim that the government cannot prove whether the specific crypto transactions it cites qualify as financial transactions under money laundering rules.

Shortly before it appeared on the company’s homepage, Chastain is accused of using confidential business information from OpenC to secretly purchase NFTs. After buying the NFTs, Chastain reportedly sold them for a profit. He is also accused of making purchases using anonymous digital currency wallets and anonymous OpenSea accounts. The company acknowledged the incident blog post,