Two Robinhood engineers charged with insider trading using Hyperliquid perpetuals

Robinhood takes market integrity seriously and has zero tolerance for insider trading,” a Robinhood spokesperson said in an email statement. “We immediately investigated and reported this matter to law enforcement and regulators, and will continue to cooperate with their investigations.”

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.

Perpetuals are derivative products that allow investors to take positions on the price movements of an underlying digital asset without owning the asset itself. Unlike traditional futures contracts, perpetuals do not expire and can be maintained indefinitely, and traders make or receive periodic funding payments to keep their positions open.

The Chai complaint alleges he traded ahead of at least 10 Robinhood listing announcements. The Xiang complaint alleges he did so on at least 11 occasions.

“Hefu Chai and Huaisong Xiang are charged with commodities fraud and wire fraud for allegedly exploiting confidential business information taken from their employer to trade perpetual futures,” said James C. Barnacle Jr., FBI assistant director in charge.