[TomMarius]

That's severely miscalculating the number of traders (around 10 million individuals, often with multiple accounts and multiple strategies, and not counting institutions). What I'm saying is that hiding in plain sight might be very easy - just join the crowd for a week and you'll look like many beginners that have scored surprisingly.

[ceejayoz]

You'd only have to look at the traders with enormous short positions on specific stocks, though.

It's likely you could continue to narrow things down via KYC data; location, past trading history, etc.

[stocknoob]

Do you trade? There are many ways to bet against a stock without actually selling it short. Shorting a stock is not even that capital efficient, and is capped at 100% return.

Sell a call spread, buy a put spread, do a diagonal calendar...

[ceejayoz]

> Do you trade?

The more relevant question is "does the SEC employ people aware of the various techniques available", to which the answer is "of course".

[andrewprock]

You'd be surprised. The SEC has largely been captured by the industry it regulates. Most employees there are junior level, looking to get hired into Wall Street.

There are certainly some strong employees as well, but they have only so much time.

[ceejayoz]

> The SEC has largely been captured by the industry it regulates.

An objection that, while true, doesn't impact "will they go after Bitcoin scammers" much. If anything, it's precisely the sort of thing they'd prefer to do over fighting with industry.

[TomMarius]

Even very average positions could yield millions, especially a series of them. Imagine a "manager" of a MLM doing this with their team of sheeps. There are many teams like that.

[jdminhbg]

I think the problem is you would need to use a previously active account to pull it off. If you get this hack today without an account history going back a ways, you're easy to find.

[TomMarius]

Two weeks of activity would be more than enough to get lost in the sea of lucky beginners.