Whether it’s a public company’s stock or a JPEG of a distracted llama, you can’t make a trade based on secret information that you know will affect a security’s future price.

Nathaniel Chastain found that out yesterday. The former head of product at leading NFT marketplace OpenSea was charged with wire fraud and money laundering linked to the insider trading of NFTs, or non-fungible tokens. It’s the first insider trading case involving digital assets, the DOJ said.

It all started last September, when OpenSea users noticed something fishy was going on with crypto wallets belonging to Chastain. They were purchasing NFTs right before the assets were featured on the site’s homepage, then selling them once their prices had gone up (typically 2x–5x the original amount, prosecutors said).

• Turns out, Chastain allegedly chose the NFTs he had purchased to be splashed on the front page, and then cashed them in for a profit of ~$67,000, according to 8BTCNews.

Once it was alerted of these transactions, OpenSea basically admitted that insider trading was taking place, and in September asked Chastain to leave the company after an investigation. (As of March, Chastain was working on a new NFT project, Oval. His charges carry a maximum 20-year prison term).

Why it matters: OpenSea is by far the largest NFT marketplace, with 65% market share. It was last valued at $13.3 billion—more than American Airlines. Therefore, a credibility hit to OpenSea is a credibility hit to the entire NFT industry.

Not that it was overflowing with reliability before these charges, either. Crypto experts predict that more legal action is on its way given widespread complaints around scams, market manipulation, phishing, and other financial crimes in the unregulated NFT space.—NF

Like everyone else, Sheryl Sandberg is leaving Facebook. After 14 years at the social media-turned-metaverse company, Zuck’s No. 2 announced via Instagram and Facebook posts that she’s stepping down as Meta’s COO. Sandberg wrote that she’ll be focusing on her philanthropic organization going forward, and that Meta’s Chief Growth Officer Javier Olivan will fill her seat as COO when she leaves in the fall. CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that Sandberg “deserves the credit for so much of what Meta is today.”

Another mass shooting. Four innocent people were killed when a gunman (who died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound) opened fire in a medical building in Tulsa, OK, yesterday afternoon. The city’s police captain called the scene “catastrophic.” It follows two other recent mass shootings, one at a supermarket in Buffalo, NY, and the other at an elementary school in Uvalde, TX, that have sparked greater urgency around gun control legislation.

Everyone gets a defamation. The jury in the highly publicized Amber Heard vs. Johnny Depp trial found that Heard defamed Depp in her 2018 Washington Post Op-Ed, and acted with actual malice. That awarded Depp $15 million—which the judge reduced to just $10.35 million. But the jury also sided with Heard on the counterclaim that Depp defamed Heard in the aftermath of the Op-Ed, awarding her $2 million.

Canada has decriminalized the possession of small amounts of opioids, methamphetamine, MDMA, and cocaine in the province of British Columbia. The new policy will run for three years to help determine if destigmatizing drugs results in more users seeking help.

• FYI: The opioid epidemic is more than an American problem. British Columbia declared overdose deaths from fentanyl—a synthetic opioid that’s 50x stronger than heroin—a public health emergency in 2016. In the years since, and especially since the start of the pandemic, overdose deaths have surged in the area.

Canada can glimpse its future in Oregon

In a departure from the federal government’s punitive war-on-drugs policies, Oregon became the first US state to decriminalize the possession of a small amount of most drugs in 2020.

How it’s going: Unclear. Drug arrests have plummeted in Oregon, with no evidence of an increase in drug-related crime, as some critics feared. However, there’s also little evidence decriminalization has caused users to seek help. Less than 1% of the 16,000 people who used services offered as part of the legislation entered treatment for their drug use. But proponents of decriminalization say more time is needed for the policy to achieve its intended results.—JW

The group that licenses Elvis Presley merch, Authentic Brands Group (ABG), sent cease-and-desist letters last month to a number of Las Vegas chapels in an attempt to quash their Elvis-themed weddings. The trademark battle poses a threat to the small chapels’ post-pandemic recovery and Vegas’s $2 billion wedding industry.

The details: Nevada law says ABG can’t stop Elvis impersonators from shaking their hips any more than parents in the ’60s. But ABG does claim the rights to the artist’s name and likeness, as well as the words “Elvis,” “Elvis Presley,” and “The King of Rock and Roll.” So if a chapel wants to call it an “Elvis wedding,” it would have to work out a licensing deal with ABG.

• Some chapels have already taken the Spirit Halloween route and are offering an off-brand “rock and roll” ceremony.

How many people want Elvis to marry them? A lot, apparently. Melody Willis-Williams, president of Vegas Weddings and Viva Las Vegas Weddings, told the Las Vegas Review Journal that she does thousands of sequined, “Burning Love”-esque weddings every year.

Zoom out: ABG could be preparing for a resurgence of Elvis enthusiasm over the new Baz Luhrmann biopic, Elvis, which is set to release June 24.—MM

Stat: Scientists have found what’s believed to be the largest single plant on Earth. An underwater meadow of seagrass off the coast of Western Australia spans 77 square miles—equivalent to 20,000 football fields or three Manhattans. And it all started from a single seed 4,500 years ago.

Quote: “Anyone who wishes to do remote work must be in the office for a minimum (and I mean *minimum*) of 40 hours per week or depart Tesla.”

Elon Musk sent an email to Tesla employees (and another to SpaceX) declaring that remote work would generally not be tolerated there. He went on to add, “There are of course companies that don’t require [working from the office], but when was the last time they shipped a great new product? It’s been a while.”

Read: My students cheated…a lot. (Matt Crump)

Dino doc: Check out Prehistoric Planet on Apple TV+ to revisit your glory days of obsessing over dinosaurs.

When should you exercise? A new study shows it might be different for men and women.

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Three headlines and a lie

Quick note: Before we get into Three Headlines and a Lie, we flubbed our own Spelling Bee yesterday and wrote “supercede” as the answer when the correct spelling is actually “supersede.” Still doesn’t look right...

Now onto the main event. Three of these headlines are real and one of them is faker than Blue Raspberry flavoring. Can you guess the odd one out?

1. Spain to force call centers to attend to customers within three minutes
2. A new TikTok trend created a ginger ale shortage for multiple airlines
3. Jill Biden says she, president settle arguments by “fexting” or “fight texting”
4. Sonic workers flee from large snake found behind fryer

If you love Three Headlines and a Lie, play along in audio form on The Refresh from Insider, where we dive deeper into these wacky headlines.

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