The Manhattan U.S. attorney’s office charged 32-year-old Nathaniel Chastain, a former product manager at the NFT marketplace, in June 2022, alleging he used confidential knowledge about which NFTs would be featured on OpenSea’s homepage to reap illicit gains for himself. (Bloomberg)

Talking point: The trial is the first ever to deal with insider trading of digital assets and could broaden the scope of the offence outside financial markets. U.S. courts have yet to weigh in on whether NFTs are securities, although a federal judge ruled in February that a class-action lawsuit against Vancouver’s Dapper Labs—which might provide some legal clarity on the question—has enough merit to proceed. Prosecutors sidestepped that issue by charging Chastain with wire fraud and money laundering rather than securities fraud. Chastain has pleaded not guilty and the trial is expected to last one to two weeks.