Regulatory Capture In Action

On January 20^th, SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce gave a long speech at Duke University entited Outdated: Remarks before the Digital Assets at Duke Conference essentially arguing against doing her job by regulating cryptocurrencies.

Below the fold I point out how she is shilling for the cryptosphere, with a long list of excuses for inaction.

Binance's Time In The Barrel

The bulk of last month's Dominoes was about Binance, the dominant unregulated cryptocurrency exchange, and the risk that in the wake of FTX's collapse it might be the next victim of cryptocurrency contagion. Just as happened with FTX, once the media picked up on reports of problems, further stories came thick and fast. So below the fold are updates on two of the problems facing Binance.

Matt Levine's "The Crypto Story": Postscript

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Sam Bankman-Fried's implausible PR strategy since his companies collapsed has been to claim that he "f**ked up", that it was simply a mistake and no-one had evil intent. Matt Levine has a post-FTX postscript to The Crypto Story entitled How Not to Play the Game providing a somewhat less implausible explanation. Below the fold I explain why Levine is still too generous to SBF.