No doubt that CFPB Director Rohit Chopra wishes to do the moral thing, but as a regulator an essential part of doing the moral thing is confining your exercise of governmental authority to the powers granted to you by Congress, which is to say in accordance with the U.S. Constitution. When regulators seek to coerce the regulated through powers not granted through Constitutional, statutory or rulemaking process, that is not the moral thing. If Mr. Chopra believes that there is a gap in the…

Notwithstanding the significant uncertainty as to whether many cryptocurrencies are securities, this is an example of a transaction that clearly involved the sale of a security. That is, the company borrowed money from retail investors (i.e., the company issued a debt security) and paid them interest. .

The fact that there was an intermediate step involving USDC is completely irrelevant to the legal analysis.  

This report appears to be the result of a meaningful self-examination by the FDIC. In contrast to what would have been a predictable call for more legislation, this report seems to place the blame where it more appropriately belongs: on the managers of the bank who made bad business decisions and on the bank's regulators who were aware of risks that the bank was taking but did not adequately respond to them.   

Of course, identifying the causes of failure does not mean that…

Although market participants are primarily focused on proposed rules put forward by the federal regulators, it would be prudent to be attentive to state activity concerning broker dealers, given the very large role that state regulators play in enforcing suitability standards. It is important that state laws and regulations are neither ambiguous nor overbroad. The  against Robin Hood is illustrative of the significant role that state regulators play in this area. Firms should be aware…