Fmr. SEC Senior Trial Counsel Howard Fischer joins Yahoo Finance Live to discuss regulatory considerations for reining in the crypto industry.
Video Transcript
AKIKO FUJITA: So is the idea that existing rules are fit to regulate crypto, like putting a square peg in a round hole? Let’s bring in the– more on the conversation, a closer look at the SEC’s approach with Howard Fischer. He’s a former senior trial counsel for the agency and a partner at Moses Singer. Howard, I mean, I don’t know which slice of all those regulations she just laid out we want to tackle, but I want to start with this point that we just heard from Yanis Varoufakis and Hilary Allen in our panel in the last block who said essentially, you know, there are so many tokens out there. Some should just be left to burn, that they shouldn’t necessarily have to be regulated. How do you respond to that?
HOWARD FISCHER: That’s one of the big questions that people are considering. And there are people who say let’s not regulate it at all. Let it collapse. If it does, no real harm. I mean, the harm is to the crypto environment. But as long as the crypto collapse doesn’t cause contagion to the traditional legacy financial structure, there are a lot of people who say let it live or die on its own merits or lack of them.
And as you point out, there are so many coins. It’s impossible to keep track of them. Some of them are trading at fractions of fractions of a cent. And so there are many people who say, why should the government expand the time and the resources in dealing with this issue? Let it deal with itself either by collapsing or by prospering.
AKIKO FUJITA: And Howard, you know, what’s interesting to me is looking at just how fragmented the regulatory landscape is.
HOWARD FISCHER: Yeah.
AKIKO FUJITA: You know, you’ve got the US discussion, which is already fragmented. You’ve got what’s happening in places like China. You’ve got what’s happening in El Salvador. I mean, how does that all come together when…
