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Veteran Wall Street enforcers are landing new roles in virtual currencies

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Re: Veteran Wall Street enforcers are landing new roles in virtual currencies

#31

Post by marnett »

rayiner wrote: post #29
marnett wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The typical practice of U.S. regulatory agencies is "I'm going to stall all efforts of change and push to repeal previously instated regulations." Then they go and get a massive salaried position at a firm they helped make more profitable - this is inherently bad, and this strategy is happening in nearly every regulatory agency under the current administration.

Well that’s the opposite of the scenario we’re talking about here, right? And I don’t think what you’re talking about is “inherently bad” either. Most deregulatory types also genuinely believe that deregulation will benefit consumers and the industry alike. If you participated in airline deregulation decades ago, and then went to go work for FedEx, whose business model was made possible by that deregulation, would th…

Yes, the standard strategy was not applicable to an industry lacking regulation. This revolving door strategy seems to have been hinged on enacting a regulation that Ripple desired (in order to protect their lead in their market) for a job on the other side.

Is all regulation good? No. Is all deregulation good? No. It is not a black and white issue. As a citizen and not a corporation, I personally lean on the side of regulating industries and providing consumer protections.

> I don’t think what you’re talking about is “inherently bad” either

deregulating finance and preventing regulation on derivatives. Good or bad?

deregulating BLM restrictions on Indian land for fracking and oil pipelines? Good or bad?

deregulating the Consumer Finance Protections Bureau? Good or bad?

I believe the pattern of deregulating industry while increasing regulation on consumers and workers (forced arbitration, preventing salaried overtime, preventing class action) is inherently bad and while FedEx is a fine example of deregulation coming out the victor, today's two-pronged trends of deregulation and restriction are not so pristine an example.

Re: Veteran Wall Street enforcers are landing new roles in virtual currencies

#32

Post by yellowstuff »

danharaj wrote: post #7
chollida1 wrote: post #4

Makes sense. I've stated this a few times, but one of Microsoft's biggest misteps in the 90's, and there weren't that many, was its absolute lack of any political lobbying. There are alot of very politically connected people who pointed out that if Microsoft had of "played the game" that the chances of their anti trust trial actually happening would have been alot less. Google and Facebook learned this lesson well an…

Silicon Valley's political influence might be a large splash but finance is the pond itself.

The Wall Street bailout probably saved the financial system, ultimately made the government money, but was incredibly unpopular. The bailout of GM lost money, helped some politically connected groups, and was mostly popular and uncontroversial. Jobs are political capital, and neither finance nor tech have that many, so they make it up with cash.

Re: Veteran Wall Street enforcers are landing new roles in virtual currencies

#33

Post by atomical »

pjc50 wrote: post #28
tw1010 wrote: post #26

Could anyone explain to me a scenario where bitcoin and/or blockchain does not make a huge impact on the world within 5-10 years? There seems to be so much excitement and real action moving in its direction that I have a hard time imagining how exactly this would all just go nowhere.

It doesn't necessarily have to go somewhere good. Collapsing pyramid schemes caused a civil war in Albania. I suspect all the financial-instrument like coins will end up banned in the West, and one or two of the blockchain apps will survive. Maybe "filecoin". There will also be a lot of things called "blockchain" that are very unlike cryptocurrencies; the X509 PKI of the future.

Why Filecoin? It hasn't launched and it isn't even traded. There are several startups backed by ERC-20 tokens that have been building a product and will launch this year.

One is even a YC startup, Request Network. Another, FunFair, has developed its own state channel technology because of an innovation gap with Ethereum.

Re: Veteran Wall Street enforcers are landing new roles in virtual currencies

#34

Post by forapurpose »

marnett wrote: post #21
maxxxxx wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That means working at the SEC is an auditioning process for big money bank jobs. Talk about conflict of interest.

This is statement is unfortunately true for every regulatory agency in the U.S. government. - CFPB -> all consumer corporations - FCC -> tech - FTC -> corporations spanning many industries - SEC -> finance - FDA -> big-pharma - USDA -> big-agra ...on and on and on...

> - CFPB -> all consumer corporations

CFPB is very new; is there really evidence of revolving door hiring going on there?

Re: Veteran Wall Street enforcers are landing new roles in virtual currencies

#35

Post by marnett »

forapurpose wrote: post #34
marnett wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is statement is unfortunately true for every regulatory agency in the U.S. government. - CFPB -> all consumer corporations - FCC -> tech - FTC -> corporations spanning many industries - SEC -> finance - FDA -> big-pharma - USDA -> big-agra ...on and on and on...

> - CFPB -> all consumer corporations CFPB is very new; is there really evidence of revolving door hiring going on there?

I was more so pointing out who would be interested in which agencies for influence. They are young and invigorated. We'll have to see how they recover from their big loss on the CFPB Arbitration Rule after the joint resolution from last fall.

Re: Veteran Wall Street enforcers are landing new roles in virtual currencies

#36

Post by user5994461 »

DINKDINK wrote: post #12

>The drumbeat of hires crescendoed in November when Ripple, [...] added Ben Lawsky to its board. He earned a tough reputation as New York’s top financial watchdog by pushing banks to scrutinize client transactions for illicit dealings. >[...]Lawsky’s jump to Ripple was particularly notable because he helped pioneer regulation of cryptocurrencies. He introduced the BitLicense, a requirement for digital currency compan…

Well, content providers are responsible for the content they distribute so that's not a good comparison.

Re: Veteran Wall Street enforcers are landing new roles in virtual currencies

#37

Post by user5994461 »

yellowstuff wrote: post #32
danharaj wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Silicon Valley's political influence might be a large splash but finance is the pond itself.

The Wall Street bailout probably saved the financial system, ultimately made the government money, but was incredibly unpopular. The bailout of GM lost money, helped some politically connected groups, and was mostly popular and uncontroversial. Jobs are political capital, and neither finance nor tech have that many, so they make it up with cash.

What's the impact on American pensions and mortgages if the banks crash?

Re: Veteran Wall Street enforcers are landing new roles in virtual currencies

#38

Post by bduerst »

yellowstuff wrote: post #32
danharaj wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Silicon Valley's political influence might be a large splash but finance is the pond itself.

The Wall Street bailout probably saved the financial system, ultimately made the government money, but was incredibly unpopular. The bailout of GM lost money, helped some politically connected groups, and was mostly popular and uncontroversial. Jobs are political capital, and neither finance nor tech have that many, so they make it up with cash.

But the lack of any major financial reform has left commercial banks open to continue making risky investments. As well as a lack of regulation on subprime lending, leading us to a now-growing subprime auto loan bubble.

The bailouts treated the symptom, not the cause.

Re: Veteran Wall Street enforcers are landing new roles in virtual currencies

#39

Post by maayank »

glup wrote: post #27

Given that this is a thread on regulation of cryptocurrencies, can someone explain to me what is good (for countries, societies, the global economy, etc. and not individuals) about cryptocurrencies? I get that blockchains are useful for recordkeeping. But then I don't see what the appeal is of having a profusion of them co-exsiting as currencies. Am I missing something? Related question, can I think of the cryptocurr…

If you accept that Blockchain is useful for record keeping (and the innovation is that it's useful for trustless record keeping) then crypto currencies are useful as part of that ecosystem. Smart contracts for example - very useful to have crypto currencies that can be added to a contract or be given to a contract. Also, having a currency/credit is useful to manage economics (e.g. it costs "gas" credit to run smart contracts).

Re: Veteran Wall Street enforcers are landing new roles in virtual currencies

#40

Post by yellowstuff »

bduerst wrote: post #38
yellowstuff wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Wall Street bailout probably saved the financial system, ultimately made the government money, but was incredibly unpopular. The bailout of GM lost money, helped some politically connected groups, and was mostly popular and uncontroversial. Jobs are political capital, and neither finance nor tech have that many, so they make it up with cash.

But the lack of any major financial reform has left commercial banks open to continue making risky investments. As well as a lack of regulation on subprime lending, leading us to a now-growing subprime auto loan bubble. The bailouts treated the symptom, not the cause.

I don't have a ton of first hand knowledge on the risk appetite of banks or the effect of banking regulation. But I assert that Matt Levine is very knowledgeable about these things and he disagrees with you. His points are that multiple 10 figure fines, higher capital requirements, and a general culture shift have actually made banks less profitable and less risky, as was intended. EG:

https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2015-02-20/capital-r...

https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-09-07/boring-ba...

https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-11-16/deregulat...

https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-11-20/utilities...

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