As discussed in the article, because of the limits on shorting, this demanded they put up risk capital in another place, exploit "loopholes" in the mechanism, use a VPN to get round SEC limits, do all kinds of things which could have wound up costing them bigtime.

Useful shorts, market informing moves, I get. But this was a game, with a stake attached to it. Using a stake to get a badly cooked steak. They post-hoc justify it as a way to get to meet and talk to other crypto investors.

This sentence from the article: In crypto, half of it is just being a first mover advantage.

Thats it folks: Asymmetric knowledge and time to act.