These margin rule amendments were a dozen years in the making. A significant part of the reason that they took so long to implement is that both regulators and the industry underestimated the operational complexity of making material changes to the SEC custody rules.

This is a lesson that the SEC and industry may learn again with the recently adopted SEC rules on the mandated clearing of many transactions in U.S. Government Securities, which likewise require significant changes to…

Even before this Order was settled, it was a topic of common discussion among crypto market participants that the CFTC staff investigating the U.S. activities of Binance, and of Binance's customers, seemed to be searching for novel and expanded theories on which to base U.S. jurisdiction, and thus on which to assert CFTC jurisdictional authority. Commissioner Pham's concurrence is devastating as to those theories.    

It is not a good look for an agency when it touts the…

This is the second set of detailed statistical information as to the funds industry that the SEC released. (See, .) In issuing this data and the prior data, the SEC touts the value of the information to the public. However, in neither case has the SEC explained why the information is valuable to the public or how the public might use the data. In fact, the value of the information to a public investor is not obvious, and it is not at all clear what use an investor could or would make of…

There is no little irony to the CRS quoting President Biden's statement that the United States should remain a leader in the international finance system, when one considers that the SEC and other agencies have put up roadblocks on the development of a regulatory framework for digital assets for the entirety of the President's administration.

The SEC's war on digital assets may be best illustrated by its accounting bulletin requiring banks that provide custodial services with respect…