600+ followers and counting 🎉 Since 2025, I’ve been fortunate to connect with a Bluesky community at the nexus of academia, capital markets, law, public policy, and regulation. Thanks to everyone who engaged or quietly followed along. Excited for 2026 and the insights it will bring.

Betty Reid Soskin, an iconic former National Park Service ranger, has died, according to her family. She was 104.

Viola Fletcher, the oldest living survivor of the 1921 Tulsa race massacre, has died. She was 111. "I have lived through the massacre every day. Our country may forget this history, but I cannot," she told Congress in 2021. Geoff Bennett has more.

More The WH is considering an executive order preempting state legislation on AI if the moratorium does not pass in the NDAA, according to a person familiar with the matter. However, a WH official said until such an order is announced, "discussion about potential executive orders is speculation."

Basketball Update/Final: Georgetown 70 Maryland 60 --First home court opening loss for Terrapins since 1976-77 season (48 straight wins until tonight) --First Georgetown win in College Park since 2/25/1964

Andrew Ross Sorkin and I agree: "The pattern is familiar, stretching back to 1929: Whenever access expands faster than safeguards, charlatans rush in and ordinary investors are often left holding the bag." www.nytimes.com/2025/10/13/m...

Stocks took a nosedive on Friday after President Trump threatened a big tariff hike on China. Until then, Wall Street had been at record highs for months, which is why we decided to check in with Andrew Ross Sorkin. cbsn.ws/4mXotn3

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission sent home 90% of its staff, including the bulk of its enforcement division, as the agency braces for a shutdown of uncertain length by drawing on lessons from two prior long-running impasses in the past 12 years. www.law360.com/artic...

Charlie Javice was sentenced to more than 7 years in prison for defrauding JPMorgan Chase when she sold her startup to the megabank for $175 million and provided bogus evidence that her company had millions of customers that didn’t actually exist.

CFTC Seeks Public Feedback on Tokenized Collateral and Stablecoins Initiative

US regulators probe stock moves before companies made crypto-treasury announcements, WSJ reports reut.rs/3W8U5uV

From No-Win to No-Lose: Legislating #AI in US States This article examines the emerging landscape of state-level #AI policies. Authors: Emmie Hine, Luciano Floridi Read More: spkl.io/63328Armlu

‘A New Level of Insanity’: Bank of Thailand Freezes Over 3 Million Accounts, Sets Transfer Limits The Central Bank of Thailand intensified its fight against online scams by freezing over 3 million accounts linked to illicit activity. Nonetheless, thousands say they were affected by … #crypto #news

Page One: @nytimes.com @ericlipton.nytimes.com www.nytimes.com/2025/09/15/u...

S&P Dow Jones in talks to bring tokenized indexes to exchanges, DeFi: Exec S&P Dow Jones Indices is exploring partnerships with major exchanges, custodians and DeFi protocols to launch tokenized versions of its benchmarks. #crypto #defi #news

Fraud was defined by lawmakers as an unauthorized transfer. Pig-butchering scams often slip through the cracks because victims are tricked by scammers into authorizing fraudulent transactions themselves. www.wsj.com/finance/regu...

SCOOP: DOGE has built an AI tool to cut 50 percent of federal regulations. The goal is to kill 100,000 regs by the one year anniversary of Trump's inauguration. wapo.st/451U8wD w/ @jeffstein.bsky.social @ddiamond.bsky.social @rachelsiegel25.bsky.social

"Overall, do you think that AI should be..." 🟢 More Regulated: 71% 🟡 No Change: 11% 🔴 Less Regulated: 5% Full poll breakdown -> usapolling.substack.com/p/the-need-f...

What we discussed was how to address the inequality between people who have historically had access to this newsletter and everyone else. That’s the really exciting part: Now everyone will be able to get it. www.bloomberg.com/opinion/news...

SIFMA wants the SEC to slow down approvals for digital securities trading (like on-chain stocks), pushing for public review. Paradigm argues SIFMA defends traditional finance & questions applying existing KYC/AML rules to decentralized platforms, advocating for tech-specific regulation.

In a crisis, we “assume that the Fed would indeed come to the rescue. But can that be taken for granted, especially after Jay Powell is replaced next year?” www.ft.com/content/182f...

The Senate votes 99-1 to remove a Trump tax bill provision that would have barred states from regulating AI if they got funding from a $500M broadband program (Bloomberg) Main Link | Techmeme Permalink

Investment firm Linqto helped pioneer a private stock trading avenue for the little guy. Now it’s facing federal investigations into its practices and a possible bankruptcy filing.

How a North Korean scammer stole hundreds of thousands from a crypto startup www.wsj.com/business/he-...

Playing chess while only seeing half the board. That’s what managing risk potentially looks like in AI-powered markets. www.wsj.com/opinion/is-t...

Does private equity outperform public markets? Not, this paper argues, when it is measured appropriately. http://spkl.io/63320fhakQ #Finance #EconSky

Central bank body BIS delivers stark stablecoin warning reut.rs/3T6miRF

Reconciliation news: The Senate Parliamentarian has allowed for 10-year ban on regulating AI to stay in the One Big, Beautiful Bill. It passes the Byrd Rule.

SEC Chair Paul Atkins says the agency is working on an "innovation exemption" to boost onchain product creation and support Trump's vision of a US crypto hub (Stephen Katte/Cointelegraph) Main Link | Techmeme Permalink

NEW: Humans + machines join forces in Morgan Stanley’s credit trading revolution MS has rolled out its bond trading algo across its entire credit franchise Traders + computers share risk books, balance sheet, P&L - a radical departure for this human-centric business www.ifre.com/people-and-m...

“Love is a battlefield.” So, increasingly, is fintech. Huione’s alleged $28 billion role in investment romance scams, also known as pig butchering schemes, exposes critical regulatory gaps that allow platforms to become global hubs for financial crime. www.wsj.com/finance/curr...

Instead of a moratorium on state laws regarding A.I., “the White House and Congress should work together on a transparency standard for A.I. companies, so that emerging risks are made clear to the American people,” writes Dario Amodei, the C.E.O. of Anthropic.

Big Four firms race to develop audits for AI products https://www.ft.com/content/5e4e2e51-3b69-48c7-a109-c3b667295d7f

AI is rewriting the backbone of finance. www.wsj.com/articles/how...

SCOTUS declined to hear a challenge by broker-dealer Alpine Securities claiming that the enforcement power given by the federal government to the FINRA, Wall Street's self-regulator, is unconstitutional reut.rs/4n012Ll

America Online

The American economy is increasingly being funded by capital markets instead of by banks. This new-look financial system is certainly innovative. But is it resilient? https://econ.trib.al/oLbFawt Illustration: Daniel Jurman

"How Data Happened" is an engaging mix of history, power, and data. I was all in the minute the Securities Act of 1933 made its cameo in chapter one.

‘Rich and naive’: why Singapore is engulfed in a ‘scamdemic’ https://www.ft.com/content/3299cf7e-67bd-4654-8aa9-55fc24a66b63

Exclusive: Major U.S. banks are exploring a joint stablecoin to compete with the crypto industry

The Economist highlights the growing pains enterprises face with generative AI—even as global interest continues to surge. Remarkably, about one in ten people on the planet now use ChatGPT every week. www.economist.com/business/202...

This "jenga" warning by Caroline Crenshaw, SEC commissioner, will resonate -"We are pulling apart our own regulatory foundation — block by block, case by case, and rule by rule. It feels all too familiar to those of who have lived through 2008." - on @alphaville.ft.com www.ft.com/content/c57c...

UBS deploys AI analyst clones as clients opt for research in video form https://www.ft.com/content/0916d635-755b-4cdc-b722-e32d94ae334d

"As bitcoin soars, investors and executives are taking their swollen digital wallets offline for safety. Criminals are coming after them, violently." (paywall) via @wsj.com www.wsj.com/finance/curr...

The WSJ takes a look at how scams on Meta’s platforms are still growing—fueled by AI, crypto, and organized financial crime. www.wsj.com/tech/meta-fr...

Robert Monks, founding father of shareholder activism, 1933-2025 https://www.ft.com/content/c5150265-89f1-450d-a336-53c38bce008c

Robert “Ed” Smylie, the NASA official who saved the Apollo 13 crew in 1970, has died at 95. He cobbled together an apparatus made of cardboard, plastic bags and duct tape after an explosion crippled the spacecraft as it sped toward the moon. nyti.ms/3Sbusb3

Crypto once dreamed of being above politics. But now the industry has developed a grubby relationship with the American government—and become synonymous with self-dealing econ.st/43iWAOC

Why Central Banks Are Piloting Policy Tools for Blockchain https://www.europesays.com/2077938/ Highlights The Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s Project Pine demonstrated that central banks can effectively implement monetary…

JP Morgan's DLT payments gain traction with 8 major MENA banks - Ledger Insights - blockchain for enterprise