The question of how digital assets held in custody should be treated for accounting purposes must begin with how the obligation to return the digital assets should be treated in the bankruptcy of the custodian. If the "owners" of the digital assets have a right to their return and the digital assets are not available to other creditors of the bankrupt custodian, then the presumption is that the digital assets should not go on the custodian's balance sheet. Conversely, if the digital assets…

The cost of dealing with any rule change increases in a more than straight-line basis as new rules are added. For example, a firm may have technology staffing to deal with one rule change at a time, but if there are two or five rule changes simultaneously, then the firm must hire more staff at the same time that other firms are trying to hire additional staffing.  

This, of course, assumes that the costs of any one rule change are readily quantifiable and can be managed. The…

At a time when the U.S. debt is soaring and the costs of financing that debt are rising faster because of inflationary pressures, it is surprising that the SEC would implement rules that so many market participants, on both buy-side and sell-side, believe will increase the costs of participating in the market for U.S. government debt and will discourage participation. One would think that the SEC would not proceed with a rule impacting the market for U.S. government securities in the absence…

The Senators presume that financial institutions will lose a lot of money in a "high quality" climate crisis scenario. , the Vice Chair of the FDIC stated, "In the U.S., there is no record of banks ever failing because of climate-related events, and it has been extremely rare for banks to even suffer meaningful losses." The Vice Chair went on to say that climate "risk is much lower than many other risks that have gotten much less attention over the past couple years, including, as an…