Two Robinhood engineers charged with insider trading using Hyperliquid perpetuals

Federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York have brought criminal charges against two Robinhood engineers, alleging they used confidential company information to trade perpetual futures on a decentralized platform. The filings name Hefu Chai and Huaisong Xiang and accuse them of buying perpetual contracts tied to tokens shortly before Robinhood announced plans to list those assets on its crypto platform. According to the complaints, both defendants were members of a group labeled "Coin Aware Individuals" that had access to a private Slack channel containing planned listing information. Prosecutors say Robinhood policy prohibited employees with that access from trading the tokens on any platform before — and for 24 hours after — a public listing announcement. The filings allege Chai traded ahead of at least 10 announcements and Xiang ahead of at least 11, with each allegedly earning more than $50,000 between 2025 and 2026. Authorities emphasized that perpetual futures — derivatives that let traders take positions on a token's price without owning the underlying asset and that have no expiration — are nonetheless covered by federal fraud laws when trades are based on misappropriated confidential information. U.S. prosecutors and the FBI described the pair's conduct as unlawful and warned such activity can lead to criminal penalties; if convicted the defendants each face up to 10 years in prison. Robinhood said it treats market integrity seriously, has a zero-tolerance policy for insider trading, and reported the matter to law enforcement and regulators while cooperating with investigations. Prosecutors framed the case as part of broader enforcement efforts that treat crypto-derivatives activity consistently with other insider-trading prosecutions; earlier this year New York authorities charged the trading firm Jane Street in a separate insider-trading matter related to TerraUSD.