Making Digital Assets Safer... Or Not

Description

In 2008, the University of Pennsylvania Law Review published "Making Credit Safer," an article by Oren Bar-Gill and then Professor (now Senator) Elizabeth Warren, arguing that credit is a dangerous intangible product in need of regulating just like dangerous tangible products such as lawn mowers and infant car seats. The authors recommended the creation of a new Financial Product Safety Commission or a new division within an existing agency to be responsible for regulating consumer credit in the United States. The result was the creation of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) in the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act in 2010, in the aftermath of the last global financial crisis. 

My how times have changed. The Trump Administration is in the process of making the next wave of financial capitalism more dangerous.  On January 10, 2025, ten days before the US Presidential inauguration, the CFPB issued a proposed interpretive rule to regulate stablecoins, cryptocurrencies, and other forms of electronic payment. The CFPB is in the process of being dismantled. We are now seeing a flurry of activity to deregulate crypto. These efforts include the April 7, 2025 memo by Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche on "Ending Regulation by Prosecution," the Executive Order issued by the White House, "Strengthening American Leadership in Digital Financial Technology," issued on January 23, 2025 (three days after Trump took office), the US Securites and Exchange Commission announcement of a new Crypto Task Force on January 21, 2025, and a wave of SEC retreats on crypto lawsuits and enforcement actions. This all comes at a time when greater certainty on the private law of digital assets is being implemented in the new US Uniform Commercial Code Article 12. 

What is going on? These themes and more will be explored.

Speaker Bio

John Linarelli is Vice Dean and Professor of Law at Pitt Law. His scholarship is in commercial, financial, and private law, and he has also written extensively on international trade law. He has been described as one of the world’s most influential comparative commercial law scholars. His work is interdisciplinary, drawing on moral philosophy, philosophy of mind, psychology, and economics.