Breaking news: How the Grinch stole data

All the Whos down at Who-Bank liked data a lot,

But the Grinch, who traded on eTorWho, did not.

He started to shake, from his head to his knees,

Whenever he had to pay exchange data fees.

Now, please don’t ask why, we don’t understand

If his motives were cheap or just plain underhand.

The fees were all legal, but he didn’t get it,

He listened too much to objectors on Reddit.

Who blamed all their woes on the Whos and their fees,

And whenever they got caught in a loss or short squeeze.

The Grinch made a small fortune long in the past

But he wanted a large one, and wanted it fast.

To do it, he needed a ton of Who-data

To come up with values for alpha and beta

And out-trade his rivals, who, left in his dust,

Would pay him their money, as surely they must.

And rolling in cash, that greedy old Grinch

Would make even more. It would be such a cinch.

But he needed Who-data, he needed it badly.

He craved it so terribly horribly madly.

He needed that data, but one problem remained:

How could he access the Whos’ data blockchain?

The Whos liked their data. They sold it a lot

To the cat in the hat and the fish in the pot

Who used it to generate sources of alpha,

When beezle-nut trading or selling alfalfa.

Geospatial data gets Zaxes abuzz

While pill-berry bushels suit Gertrude McFuzz

For Yertle the Turtle, machine-readable news,

Delivered in real time by clever old Whos.

Their data was distributed across the Who-nation, 

On Who-Tron and Who-Rate and other workstations.

On D&B Who-vers and if you were frugal

You can look for the data by searching on Who-gle.

They were proud of their data, even anal-retentive

Of how innovative, and truly inventive

It was, and of course, that would make it expensive.

And, of course, any fees always made the Grinch pensive.

So he plotted a plan that filled him with glee,

Of how to get hold of Who-data for free.

So, one day when Who-Bank had suffered a hack,

And the Whos were distracted getting their systems back,

The Grinch, under cover of that fateful breach,

Approached a young intern, a star-bellied Sneech,

And said “I need data. If you can connect me,

Then I’ll make my fortune and all will respect me.

I’ll load up my algos with data galore,

I’ll crank up the volume, then crank it some more,

And the Whos, all distracted by Christmas Who-roasts,

No longer have data, while I have the most.

With their data and charts and security master,

I’ll be easily able to place my trades faster,

And further, as far as their Who-eyes can see,

Because I’ll have the lowest of low latency.”

And the poor little Sneech did not know what to say,

His boss was away from Who-bank for the day.

So absent the checks of his boss’ watchful eyes, 

He coded and rolled out a fresh API

That would suck Who-Bank’s systems all dry of their data,

Which it sent to the Grinch for him to use later.

But the Sneech had his doubts, and thought that he oughtn’t

Be sharing this data of such great importance,

And called up compliance who said clear as day

That data should never be shared in this way.

So, he shut down that API, plugged up the leak

Faster than any Who-mouse could Who-squeak. 

Then he built an enormous secure firewall

With Yooks and with Zooks overseeing it all.

And he wrote a new program that uses AIs

To make sure that in future all data complies

With their licenses, then he called up the Who-FBI.

And the Who-FBI hauled the Grinch off to jail,

But Judge Cindy-Lou Who granted him bail,

And he gathered his assets and fled far away,

Leaving the Whos to enjoy Christmas Day.

And when he departed, they all did applaud it,

But next time they’ll catch it with much better audits.

And now, from his non-extradition home in the Caymans,

The Grinch lives a peaceful new life as a layman.

Also now, when he trades, he’s not such a miser,

And complies with his license, because now he is wiser.