Every Friday, Law Decoded delivers analysis on the week’s critical stories in the realms of policy, regulation and law.
Editor’s note
Policy changes slowly. Crypto wants to move fast. Sometimes fairly, sometimes not, the crypto industry often portrays traditional financial regulators as calcified relics unprepared to deal with the coming new world.
To be fair, everyone seems to acknowledge that markets and trading systems need comprehensive upgrades, but national and international regulators are accountable to a wider range of concerns than any specific industry. The crypto industry sometimes takes that as a personal slight, waiting for some sudden burst of the regulatory dam. Progress is more like erosion.
That being said, this week has seen some hopeful if oblique changes in regulatory posture. I’ll be trying to piece together some major developments from the SEC’s attitude toward security tokens, as well as the unconfirmed first public offering by a crypto exchange, and also deciphering the newly announced strategy from the CFTC.
Kollen Post, Policy Editor, @the_postman_