Robinhood Engineers Charged With Using Insider Info for Profit
Two Robinhood engineers have been charged with commodities fraud and wire fraud for allegedly using confidential information to trade Hyperliquid perpetual futures.
Hefu Chai and Huaisun Xiang, who worked at Robinhood, used their access to non-public information about which cryptocurrencies would be listed on Robinhood Crypto in 2025-2026 to place trades on Hyperliquid.
The engineers allegedly bought perpetual futures tied to tokens ahead of public announcements from Robinhood about listing them. After the announcements, they closed the relevant positions, making more than $50,000 in profit each.
US Attorney Jamie MacDonald said that using confidential information to trade derivatives is unlawful and applies not only to traditional financial instruments but also to products such as perpetual futures and tokenized securities.