Money & Markets Report: March 16, 2023


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Theme: Bank Run or Take Down?

Interview: Solution Series: Securing Your Privacy from Big Tech with Rob Braxman

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125 Comments

  3. Thank you both – and the team – as ever.
    It was clear by March last year that the fallout from the C19 injections might destroy trust in all vaccines, and we’re seeing that play out. But the biotech mob have another Achilles heel: they need lab rats, and numbers are dwindling. There were a few articles on this in the UK last month, perhaps a canary in the coalmine, but the story has been smothered. Might be one to keep an eye on, if only as legislation is drafted to avoid a crunch, legitimising operating “at the speed of science”…
    https://www.theguardian.com/science/2023/feb/27/patients-losing-out-amid-slump-in-nhs-clinical-trials-warn-top-clinicians?trk=public_post_comment-text

    1. Haha!

      I had to go to the site to see if you were referring to four legged or two legged rats.

  4. Listen to what John said about the UCC change proposals. Change in state commercial statutes has no effect whatsoever on whether CBDC is money or not money. UCC-based state commercial statutes deal with transfer of, security interests in and other matters dealing with transactions in assets. The ABA committee that adopted changes to the uniform code (which states can adopt or not) says CBDC was recognized in a previous version — not the 2022 changes. I, frankly, have not mastered UCC in the last 30 years since I was in law school, if I ever fully mastered it, so I cannot say from the proposed changes in state law (which involve adoption of the uniform code changes from 2022) what exactly is the practical, on-the-ground effect would be to the ordinary person or, for that matter, on businesses, including banks, that deal in intangible assets. The effect MIGHT be just making clear how to transfer crypto, CBDC and other intangible assets not previously addressed. If that is the case, it is a good thing to provide certainty in business transactions. All of the summaries I have found so far do not address what the bottom-line practical effects would be, particularly on other parts of state laws (i.e., non-UCC/commercial statute matters). If anyone has found such an explanation, please let me know!

    1. Good points. My understanding is that the Uniform Law Commission, in Chicago, wrote this in July, 2022. The amendment contains significant changes to definitions, plus, new provisions about “controllable electronic records,” and a new chapter 12. These changes and additions are being made to Article 4, Bank Deposits and Collections. I believe legal scholars and others working with commercial transactions should have more time to study and comment on these changes to the UCC before state legislators are asked to pass legislation. Most of them have no idea what they’re voting for.

    2. https://www.natlawreview.com/article/new-ucc-article-12-matters-to-more-just-cryptocurrency

      Many of the provisions which would be added by the 2022 Amendments with respect to CERs, controllable accounts and controllable payment intangibles are intentionally vague. The drafters were candid that they intend Article 12 and related provisions to breathe and grow with changes in technology. But the open-endedness of the language may put lawyers and market participants under an unfamiliar burden of looking inside the workings of computers and software.

      … In old-fashioned, familiar control provisions in the existing UCC, such as control by possession or by entering a control agreement, the tests are determinable with familiar tools that lawyers and businesspeople have directly at their disposal: they can determine if a physical instrument is in possession by reference to the instrument’s reality in the physical universe; and they can tell if a control agreement meets the requirements of control by reading it. When the control characteristics are embedded in lines of computer code, how will lawyers and businesspeople assure themselves that the technology, in fact, satisfies the legal tests?

      Short of all lawyers going to computer coding boot camp, it would seem that the changes wrought by Article 12 may necessitate significant reliance on the work of technology consultants who do know how computers and software engineering works − but who may not themselves be lawyers or sensitive to the legal and commercial aspects of the transactions that their work may impact. Lawyers who have rendered or received complex reasoned legal opinions for electronic chattel paper might wonder if similar complexity will be required now for what has previously been a simple and straightforward legal opinion: a filing perfection opinion on accounts.

      Electronic Chattel Paper?
      https://www.wordnik.com/words/chattel

      1. An article of movable personal property.
      2. A slave.
      3. Property; wealth; goods; stock. See cattle

    3. The UCC changes seem to be concerned with liens and perfection of collateral, and may be more about digital blockchains being used to control physical (including human?) assets than “currency”.
      https://www.wolterskluwer.com/en/expert-insights/perfecting-a-security-interest-in-digital-assets
      https://www.mayerbrown.com/en/perspectives-events/publications/2021/08/virtual-currencies-and-other-digital-assets-under-the-ucc
      https://bracewell.com/insights/new-ucc-article-12-foreseeable-issues-using-cryptocurrencies-and-nfts-collateral

      Lastly, a lender can perfect its security interest by control by obtaining the private key of a borrower’s wallet account. A private key is a key tool in blockchain technology and “gives you the ability to prove ownership or spend the funds associated with your public address.”7 While it’s a key tool that ultimately governs crypto transactions on a blockchain platform, a private key can pose risks to both lenders and borrowers in a secured transaction. From the lender’s perspective, the borrower might provide wrong information, so it would be safer to have a certain “transfer” element (as the above two options would provide) in the control process. From the borrower’s perspective, sharing information about the private key gives a lender or any third party a de facto ownership of its crypto account, so the crypto assets in that account might be used in a way not intended by the borrower. Also, for both, the private key information might be stolen during the transaction, which puts both at risk of losing the crypto assets used as collateral. Because of these potential risks, borrowers and lenders should be cautious about perfecting security interest by sharing private keys.

      A bit like SVB and other banks giving loans and requiring the funds to be deposited at the bank which issued the loan?

    1. Not what it seems. Not good news The one party pushing for fundamental change, lost 10 of their 12 seats.

      1. Agree with you 100% Catherine as it is another example of “twining”. Using BBB may stand for Build Back Better.

  7. John Titus: which browser extension are you using for highlighting, which does not work with Substack? In theory, Firefox’s “Reader View” should be plain text and compatible with manual text selection.

    1. For Money and Markets, I use Brave, and the extension is Weava.
      In Firefox’s “Reader View,” can I highlight multiple passages on a single page and come back to them later–after I’ve clicked off the page and into, say, another application? I could never get that to work.

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