On March 31, 2022, the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association (“SIFMA”) released its after-action report on Quantum Dawn VI – a global financial-markets cybersecurity exercise.
Quantum Dawn VI was conducted on November 18, 2021, with over 1,000 participants from 240 financial institutions and regulatory bodies representing 20 countries. The exercise simulated a large-scale ransomware…

In the 1920s, Wall Street cleared and settled trades by the end of the day after the trade instruction (“T+1”). Over the years, that cycle bloated to T+4, to T+3 in 1993, and then T+2 in 2017. Last week, the SEC proposed to go back to that old standard in a new way, shaving a…

Requiescat Diem. Launched with great fanfare three years ago as Libra, the Facebook/Meta-led blockchain stablecoin effort now called Diem announced January 31 that it will shut down and sell its assets to Silvergate Capital Corporation.
Libra was launched June 18, 2019, with support by many key finance and payments industry participants. Libra aspired to become…

The People’s Bank of China (“PBOC”) announced this morning that it is banning crypto currencies and related services, including “trading, order matching, token issuance and derivatives for virtual currencies are strictly prohibited.”  CNBC and other outlets reported that the ban also extends to overseas exchanges serving Chinese residents: “’Overseas virtual currency exchanges that use the…

This past Tuesday, September 21, the chorus calling for more regulation over crypto reached a sort of crescendo.
The SEC
Earlier, in September 14 testimony before the Senate Banking Committee [1], former CFTC and current SEC Chair Gensler noted that cryptocurrencies sit astride several different regulatory regimes, posing broad risks:
“Currently, we just don’t have…

The price of Bitcoin recently topped $57,000.  New York’s Attorney General issued an Investor Alert on Virtual Currency Risks, as did the SEC’s Division of Examinations. The SEC’s “crypto-mom,” Commissioner Hester Peirce has been speaking on it daily, and Chair-nominee Gensler touches on it in his March 2 remarks before the Senate Banking Committee.
SEC…

The Deposit Trust & Clearing Corp. (“DTCC”) released a February 24 roadmap for shortening the settlement cycle for US equities by half over the next two years.  The proposal anticipates DTCC’s completion of its “Project ION” using distributed ledger technology (“DLT”) to integrate and speed clearing and settlement processes.  Moving to a shorter settlement cycle…