Arbitrage

When a country makes it difficult to do business, it opens opportunities for other countries to compete with freedom.

Regulation by enforcement leads to ‘exodus’ of talent — RAK DAO exec

Crypto will go where it is least regulated. Maybe that’s the point of regulation by enforcement. You can’t make it illegal per se with legislation because you don’t have the votes. Impose sufficient uncertainty and you can get what you want, even if you don’t tell people explicitly that they can’t have their tokens.

Pay attention when a politician says they won’t ban fracking or force you to drive an electric car.

They’re right. They won’t. They won’t have to do so. Some nameless bureaucrat will murder the target industry with rules like it’s a warzone.

‘“I do believe that there is a need for clarity when it comes to the regulation. It cannot be regulation by enforcement. We’ve seen how it works out in the US, and it was just an exodus of talent. Very sad for the industry because it just puts us down, literally a few years down.”’

Bradley Tusk Gets Real About Tech Regulations 

Elections matter.

‘Who the next president appoints. There are four or five key positions that will matter to tech. The first would be the SEC chair. Gary Gensler is literally crypto’s worst enemy. Certainly Trump will get rid of him. I can’t imagine Harris would keep him either. But whoever they put in will have a big impact on crypto regulation, on securities transactions.

‘Number two would be the FTC chair. I strongly agree with Lina Khan’s work to try to break up big tech, because as an early-stage investor, I think that these giant monopolies really limit early-stage innovation. I could never invest in a company trying to compete with Apple or Amazon. But the chilling effect she’s had on M&A deals is significant. What does that lead to? Less venture investing, less company innovation, fewer fresh companies, fewer jobs. The next FTC chair will tell us a lot.’‘

Inside the FTC’s Sweeping Overhaul of U.S. Antitrust Merger Filing Requirements

Agencies may not be as free to re-write the law now that Loper is in place, but they can certainly make it difficult and costly to comply with the existing statutes to obtain the same end goal. Here, the FTC is trying to chill mergers and acquisitions activity.

‘Sweeping changes to Hart-Scott-Rodino Act premerger notification rules create significant new disclosure burdens that will delay proposed mergers and acquisitions. Barring a legal challenge, the rules will likely take effect in January 2025.

‘Once the rules take effect, filers may be required to provide narrative responses to certain questions, certain documents created in the ordinary course of business, significantly more information about areas of potential competitive overlap or supply relationships, as well information about sensitive government contracts and certain types of foreign subsidies.’

Exclusive: A key to Citi's regulatory woes - staff need skills 'enhancement'

Shortages of staff that are trained in the myriad complexities of regulation and bureaucracy are a big problem.

Perhaps AI solutions will come along that help bridge this gap.

Of course, once we lower the attention tax of compliance, bureaucracy will increase to fill in the gap.

‘Citi’s analysis, a portion of which was seen by Reuters and has not been previously reported, shows the bank has been grappling with a shortage of skilled personnel, finding at times that it did not have the right training and assessment tools to fix its regulatory challenges. The bank, which has for the past four years been operating under two regulatory reprimands, called consent orders, must resolve these problems for the decrees to be lifted.’

The New Fiduciary Rule (51): The Loper Bright Decision and What it Means for DOL Regulations

Here’s something interesting. The statute regarding what does and does not constitute a fiduciary obligation has not changed since 1975. There have been massive changes in the practice of investment advice since then, including the emergence of new instruments and business models.

The Department of Labor says that they get to invent new rules (with the imposition of new obligations) because the statute hasn’t changed to reflect this evolution of the practice.

What?

This is going to be a very interesting test in the courts. Industry will argue that if there were a sufficient reason to impose new regulations, Congress would pass legislation.

Got Loper?

‘The DOL will argue that circumstances have change since 1975, for example, the enactment of Code section 401(k) and the post-ERISA growth in the importance of those plans. As a part of that, the DOL asserts that rollover recommendations should be fiduciary advice.

‘On the other hand, some financial industries, and particularly the insurance industry, will argue that a one-time recommendation associated with a rollover is a sales transaction that should not be held to a fiduciary standard.

‘A critical question for the courts is whether the DOL has authority to issue a new fiduciary recommendation that, among other things, says that a rollover recommendation, explicit or implicit, is fiduciary advice. The Supreme Court’s decision in the Loper Bright case establishes the standard for the courts to evaluate an agency’s authority.’

 Australia: Proposed changes to digital regulation

This is a comprehensive bill. Recall that the Australians also took on Google with respect to news previously.

Here, we have anti-doxxing, a tort for the invasion of privacy, a federal minimum age requirement for social media access, measures to combat digital “misinformation and disinformation”, scams prevention, and strengthening of previous legislation fighting hate crimes.

So, it’s a grab bag.

‘The Australian Government has introduced a raft of new digital legislation, including to combat misinformation and disinformation, and hate speech. It has also announced plans for minimum age requirements for social media.’

Bitcoin investors weigh impact of US regulation, ETF inflows

You get a new car. And you get a new car. And you get a new car.

‘Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee in a tight US presidential race, on Monday pledged to support a regulatory framework for crypto with three weeks to go to election day. The vice president’s rival, Republican Donald Trump, has already embraced the digital-asset industry in the duel for votes. He’s viewed as the more avowedly pro-crypto of the two candidates.

‘The recent Bitcoin jump “is largely election-driven, initially from Trump’s lead in both prediction markets and polls, and later from semi-supportive statements regarding crypto markets from the Harris campaign,” said Noelle Acheson, author of the Crypto Is Macro Now newsletter. ‘

Fight Club! Is Lina Khan a Heroine or a Bully?

Americans should be wary of consolidated corporate power. For some people, this trepidation stems from the harm the big companies can do to the consumer. For others, it is both a political threat and a tantalizing prospect to be able to control: the power to influence at scale.

Just because consolidated corporate power is an issue does not make antitrust the correct instrument to wield in seeking to contain it or to deploy it for one’s own purposes. It has spillover consequences that may be undesirable from a policy perspective.

Good for The Free Press in sponsoring a debate to showcase both sides.

‘Matt Stoller, who writes the popular antitrust newsletter Big, thinks Khan is a force for good. Judge Glock, from the Manhattan Institute, thinks that most of what she’s done has been counterproductive.’