The refusal of the bank regulators to allow banks to custody digital assets has likely resulted in significant damage to investors. Had the bank regulators permitted banks to provide custodial services, the losses at, for example, FTX, would likely have been far lower—as investors would have used regulated bank custodial services rather than relying on FTX.  

These Executive Orders signal a massive cultural shift for the regulators. For many years, it has been largely expected that laws and rules would simply accrete, along with the size of the government. New problems would bring new rules and new agencies, and there would be little meaningful re-examination of whether an existing rule was still needed, or even whether it had worked in the first place.

A cultural shift that assumes that an adopted rule is not an inherently forever thing,…

The Dealer Rule embodied three flaws that ran through virtually all SEC rulemakings during the past four years.

The CFPB was devised as an agency that would be largely independent of both the President and Congress—a power unto itself. Congress does not appropriate funds to the CFTC. Rather, the head of the CFPB could independently appropriate funds from the Federal Reserve.

There is no law that would require the new head of the CFPB to appropriate funds for the agency. So, if Mr. Vought decides to let the agency go bust, that would seem to be entirely consistent with the law as written and…