It seems to me that if you are actually able to create an online forum of hackers and others that allows you to engage in profitable insider trading, that you might want to keep that on the "down low." Because, you know, I hear that there are federal prosecutors and agencies out there that are devoted to ferreting out and punishing insider traders.

And yet, I read an interview yesterday with a person who claims to be the administrator of an online forum called "KickAss Forum" that is reportedly "a relatively new forum focused at hacking and coding, but also includes a section for insider trading information leaks and is exclusive to leaked information/data (majorly targeting corporates and executives)." According to the interview published on DeepDotWeb, the KickAss Insider Trading Forum is a team of seven people -- including three hackers tasked with obtaining market-moving information. Others on the team reportedly include an economist, and investor, and two trading analysts.

The unidentified forum administrator said that to gain access to the KickAss Insider Trading Forum a potential user must submit a "jaw-dropping" application and agree to an interview including "highly advanced questions about economics or trading." If they pass the interview, the user is then "given the opportunity to pay 1 bitcoin a month for their subscription in the sub-forum." [Note: 1 bitcoin is currently valued at $452 as of this morning]. The forum administrator said that there are already 15 investment firms using the forum, and over 25 on-going renewed members, and that some users are making enough profit "for the year" off of bits of information gleaned from the forum.

 

Given the news that comes out regularly these days about hackers successfully stealing market-moving information from law firms and elsewhere, the KickAss Insider Trading Forum seems like it could be a real thing -- but I have no idea. One key question that comes up in the interview is why the hackers and others supposedly involved would want to take the risk of sharing their valuable information on an online forum instead of just using it quietly. The forum administrator's response was that they make money off of the forum, "but most importantly we would like the most talented people in trading to join and we have been successful at that."

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