The NYSE rule proposal was approved by a 3-2 vote with SEC Chair Clayton in the majority and both Democratic Commissioners voting no. Chair Clayton has now resigned. What might that do to the Nasdaq proposal?

Chair Clayton had a successful tenure. From a policy perspective, he succeeded in reducing burdens on issuers registered with the SEC and facilitating capital raising. Beyond these, he oversaw the adoption of quite a number of rules necessary to implement Dodd-Frank, including Regulation Best Interest and much of the framework for the regulation of security-based swaps.

The SEC has been struggling for a number of years with the question of how to allow broker-dealers to custody digital securities where the procedures for holding these assets may be less assured than of holding ordinary securities. From a policy perspective, this is a more difficult issue for the SEC than it might be for the banking regulators. In the event of a broker-dealer's insolvency (for example, in a case where the digital assets were stolen), all of the firm's customers share…

How does one take a data-driven, "mathematical" approach to financial regulation, or to risk management, when the data are not there and obtaining the data is not imminent? How would the regulators propose to measure "progress" or "success"? Or "failure"?