FinTales Issue 31: Cow Paths & Regulatory Approaches

Regulating emerging tech is an exercise in navigating dichotomies. Governments and regulators across the world are grappling with pretty much the same questions: Will the old, tried, and tested laws endure the onslaught of new technologies? Take the FTX debacle, for example – is it good-old-fraud? If so, are anti-fraud and money laundering laws (that old battle axe) enough to deter and punish it? What about disruptive tech, like, AI – what happens when it hallucinates, or acts of its own accord, or is just plain creepy? When is technology novel enough... disruptive enough... odd enough... to command new rules of the game – new regulatory pathways?

Not to belabour the point, but I can't help sharing this story about the allure of old, weather-beaten pathways: There once was a man who grew up on a farm; he spent many an idle childhood hour observing cows of the farm. Day after day, he saw them walk the same path – navigate the same trees, bushes and cross the same