Courtesy of William C. Johnson and Sangho Yi Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs) are a novel financing method in which crypto tokens are auctioned to the public in return for fiat or cryptocurrencies using blockchain-based platforms such as Ethereum. The technology building ICOs creates a new landscape within financial economics where many important economic concepts need… Read More »
Courtesy of Ross Buckley, Douglas Arner, Robin Veidt, and Dirk Zetzsche Regulatory sandboxes are the flavor of the month. Over 50 countries have now established or announced a “financial regulatory sandbox” since the UK Financial Conduct Authority established the first one in 2016. Sandboxes are safe spaces in which FinTech start-ups and other innovative enterprises… Read More »
Courtesy of Alberto Manconi, Fabio Braggion, and Haikun Zhu The Global Financial Crisis led economists and regulators to refocus on the relationship between household leverage and macroeconomic performance. The ensuing debate has revolved around how best to contain household debt using a variety of approaches, with much emphasis being placed on loan-to-value (LTV) caps, i.e.… Read More »
Courtesy of David Fratto and Lee Reiners Last week’s announcement that a hacker accessed the personal information of approximately 106 million Capital One card customers and applicants has cast fresh light on financial institutions increasing reliance on the cloud. The hacker, a former employee of Amazon Web Services Inc., allegedly breached Capital One’s firewalls to… Read More »
On June 18th, Facebook released a white paper and additional documentation that describe a new cryptocurrency, called Libra, which will be governed by the twenty-eight member Libra Association (the “Association”). Shortly thereafter, the Senate Banking Committee and the House Financial Services Committee announced they would hold hearings to look into Libra and Facebook’s involvement; these… Read More »
Courtesy of Julia von Buttlar* Artificial intelligence (AI) technologies are increasingly being used in a variety of fields, none more so than the financial industry. AI offers great opportunities; it can enable companies to automate manual processes and meet their regulatory requirements at a higher speed with a lower error rate and less effort. For… Read More »
The following is an edited comment letter that was submitted to the Securities and Exchange Commission (the “Commission”) on June 14th in response to the Commission’s May 20, 2019 order (Release No.34-85896) to institute proceedings under Section 19(b)(2)(B) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1933 (“Act”) to determine whether to approve or disapprove of Cboe… Read More »
Courtesy of Dina El Mahdy Over a decade ago, the US market and global economy experienced a financial crisis that erased $8 trillion in stock market wealth and led to unprecedent government intervention in financial markets. This crisis was preceded, less than ten years prior, by the dot-com bubble, which saw several companies fail due… Read More »
Courtesy of Barbara C. Matthews (JD/LLM ’91) “Hi! I’m from the government. I’m here to help.” The regulatory perimeter regarding crypto-assets continues to expand. The latest move comes from the International Organization of Securities Commissions (IOSCO) which released for comment on 28 May, 2019 suggested regulatory oversight standards[1] to govern crypto-asset trading platforms (the “IOSCO… Read More »
Last month, a bill was introduced in the North Carolina General Assembly that would make North Carolina the fourth state – after Arizona, Wyoming and Utah – to offer a regulatory sandbox for innovative financial services firms. Broadly defined, a regulatory sandbox is a ‘safe space’ in which businesses can test innovative products or services… Read More »
