How effectively are digital assets regulated?

How effectively are digital assets regulated?

Around the world, regulation has struggled to keep pace with the explosive growth in digital assets, from cryptocurrencies to initial coin offerings. Below is a snapshot of how the global landscape was shaping up as of October. The rules will continue to evolve, as regional and national legislators draft new policies and courts hammer out precedents that signpost what businesses may and may not do.

What is the big picture?

Global policymaking on digital assets is very fragmented, partly because much of it has been a scramble to keep pace with market changes and emerging threats. Another factor is the absence of an authority to oversee a truly international effort. While banking regulators agree global policies under the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision, digital assets have no equivalent convening body.

Some suggest that even the Financial Stability Board, which includes the finance ministers of some of the world’s biggest economies, is not a broad enough forum because the questions around digital assets stretch beyond finance into fields such as technology and into wider society.

In the US, Gary Gensler, recently appointed as Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) chair and former chair of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), is seen by some as a