3 entries tagged regulation. All writing.
OCTOBER 6, 2026 The Rule That Never Mentioned Lightning FinCEN withdrew its 2023 proposal to label crypto mixing a "primary money laundering concern." I read the withdrawal notice and the original proposal. Neither says the word Lightning, but the proposal's definition of mixing was written so broadly that a literal reading brushes against how Lightning works. Here is what the rule said, what it would have meant for Lightning service providers, what the withdrawal changes today, and what it leaves alone. OCTOBER 1, 2026 The Vault Rule Got Rewritten the Day Before She Left Today the SEC proposed the rule that decides whether your financial advisor can actually hold crypto for you, and it does something the custody rule hasn't done since it was written in response to Bernie Madoff: let the advisor be the vault. It also quietly blesses something the industry has been doing in a legal gray zone for years. The vote landed on commissioner Hester Peirce's second-to-last day on the job, and her own statement reads like a closing argument. SEPTEMBER 30, 2026 The Committee That Won't Say Its Own Name A policy paper published today calls index providers "Wall Street's invisible committee." I went and found the actual committees — six unnamed people at MSCI who can decide whether Bitcoin counts as an operating asset, a board at FTSE Russell that is contractually forbidden from naming its own members, and the one index manager anyone actually knows by name, only because the SEC caught him trading on what he knew. Feedback on the live MSCI proposal closes today. The decision lands October 16.