The difference is one is illegal, the other one is not.

Maybe there should be a maximum betting limit the same way there should be an election contribution limit — let's say something like 10x the federal minimum wage or whatever so if you are betting under USD 75.5, it is A ok but once you cross this number, we require public disclosures, no hiding behind LLC, natural persons only, KYC, the whole shebang.

Actually, now that I think about it, let's get rid of the minimum, there should be no minimum, all bets even five cents must be fully disclosed and attributed to natural persons, no hiding behind "corporations are people, my friend" nonsense.

Artificially influencing a stock's price is illegal by itself, and there's probably about a half dozen other charges that could be tacked in this scheme, possibly including extremely serious ones like wire fraud which gets tacked on pretty much every crime involving digital tech.

I was responding to this argument:

>>the real danger of insider trading are company insiders being incentivised to damage the company to make a quick buck.

Damaging the company is illegal as well. Making things illegal doesn't magically stop people from doing what they have incentives to do.