2. Crypto is a unique and new player in banking and securities. Specifically, the ledger is open to all and very transparent. In order to know which wallet owns what and how much, you need to be able to look at the ledger to confirm. This design is intended to prevent fraudulent transactions. Banks and brokerages don't keep an open ledger, they keep an extremely private and heavily secured database.
3. People are heavily disincentivized to disclose this information. See: Epstein, and the people and companies that did financial business with him. Openly telling the public you sold stock to someone who trafficked underage girls isn't good for your reputation.
4. Futures in this case are similar to stocks. It's literally a market: You put in a bid to buy or sell something, someone else accepts, and both parties agree to a contract. Digital trading systems match buyers to sellers, and does so on behalf of both parties. If you trade using Fidelity and place a bid for 1,000 units of Corn at $500/unit, you might end up buying from Chase. Even if the transaction is in-person, the trader may be acting on behalf of someone else. In the case of the $580 million deal, it was spread over 6,200 contracts.
5. The STOCK Act of 2012 was supposed to prevent this, at least for members of Congress. The PELOSI Act that's currently introduced for voting is supposed to further prevent this.
6. To my original point: the problem isn't that these trades occurred. The problem isn't even that it's almost certainly insider trading. The problem is that government secrets are being leaked. The authors argument is that it almost certainly won't be investigated and any attempt at investigation will be blocked, because the level of corruption in the current administration is such that the sale of state secrets for others to profit off of is permissible. In fact, they can brazenly do it in the open while still ensuring that their privacy will be kept because of #1.
