> Unless somebody snitches there's no real way to prosecute insider trading. You can say you just felt like making a trade

If you have perfect opsec, sure, you'll just waste a few years and hundreds of thousands of dollars in court. If you texted a friend, or told a friend who then texted a friend, or traded too soon after receiving privileged information, you're probably fucked.

> Unless they're absolute morons

At least in securities, the dirty secret is most insider traders are in Congress and/or morons.

> Unless they're absolute morons, the people doing insider trading for large sums of money will have already built a strong alibi.

My theory is they are banking on preemptive presidential pardons in Dec 2028.

In some nations just gambling on a war that your soldiers have died in would ruin people's careers and possibly their lives permanently as they are shunned by society.

In other nations you can illegally sell arms to Iran in order to illegally evade congress's attempts to stop you supplying money to terrorists, illegally shred evidence and lie to congress under oath about it all and get a job as a pundit on Fox News.

I'm not convinced there won't be someone with a chip on their shoulder eager to snitch. Trump has been known to leave folks out to dry once they're used up (for example, Ruby Giuliani and Mike Lindell). Just today there's been discussion about how Kash Patel feels like he's on the chopping block:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47813001

you can say you just felt like making a trade, or that you read one of Trump's posts the moment he put it up on Truth Social and you just happened to have the trade ready to go.

An employee with access to Truth Social's backend can in theory do this by reading the tweets he's writing before he sends them.