> Modern regulators seem to prefer retrospective punishment over prospective advice and regulation.
In most cases that’s what you want. The Communications Decency Act was written way too early and most of it was struck down, except the important section 230. When the Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act was revised in 1962 a huge swath of previously approved drugs of longstanding experience (e.g. aspirin) were grandparented.
Most cases. Nuclear reactors are a good counter example.
I consider cryptocurrency mathematically interesting but otherwise arrant nonsense. Nevertheless I think the “wait and see” regulatory approach, while frustrating, was the right one: don’t stop it (so people can innovate) but don’t provide the protection of widow-and-orphan rules until it has had time to develop. After all, perhaps there is a pony in there, and early regulation could have strangled it.
I think there's a reasonableiddle ground and that the SEC waited far too long to take a stance. Allowing companies like Block One, Solana, and IOHK to start up and offer highly-centralized "crypto" assets to US consumers put those consumers at risk of "highly volatile crypto" + centralized control.
The SEC did the right thing when suing Ripple, but they've missed opportunities to go after bad actors who were misrepresenting their product as a decentralized network, and now retail investors will be the one who lose.
In my opinion, they've failed to act in a reasonable time frame and their inability to do their job will end up hurting common people in the US. I'd like to see Gary Genslar held accountable for his mistake. It's not like he is ignorant around crypto assets and he even evangelised his friends blockchain network to his students when he was teaching at MIT.
In most cases that’s what you want. The Communications Decency Act was written way too early and most of it was struck down, except the important section 230. When the Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act was revised in 1962 a huge swath of previously approved drugs of longstanding experience (e.g. aspirin) were grandparented.
Most cases. Nuclear reactors are a good counter example.
I consider cryptocurrency mathematically interesting but otherwise arrant nonsense. Nevertheless I think the “wait and see” regulatory approach, while frustrating, was the right one: don’t stop it (so people can innovate) but don’t provide the protection of widow-and-orphan rules until it has had time to develop. After all, perhaps there is a pony in there, and early regulation could have strangled it.