Other Useful Links

Academic Laws

Greshams Law.

Gresham's law, observation in economics that “bad money drives out good.” More exactly, if coins containing metal of different value have the same value as legal tender, the coins composed of the cheaper metal will be used for payment, while those made of more expensive metal will be hoarded.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gresham%27s_law

In this day and age of crypto, I find this theory constantly popping up.
Do we have the sameness of money? Is all Tether equal?
https://tether.to/en/transparency/?tab=usdt

Just compare the circulation on, say ETH (billions), versus Polkadot (millions).

Which USDT would you part with first?
(When you're doing a LTV you might want to consider this liquidity risk)

All the USDT supported protocols:
https://tether.to/ru/supported-protocols/

Metcalfe's Law

Metcalfe's Law was one of the first attempts to quantify the network effect, and proposes that the value of a network is proportional to the square of the number of users (n^2).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metcalfe%27s_law

Simple stuff. Anywhere I see a network effect - be it applications on a protocol or the number of participants on a market - liquidity begets liquidity.

Dunbars Number: 150

This is another one that repeatedly pops up for me. Once you're alert to it - you'll be haunted by it too!

Dunbar's number is a suggested cognitive limit to the number of people with whom one can maintain stable social relationships—relationships in which an individual knows who each person is and how each person relates to every other person. He proposed that humans can comfortably maintain 150 stable relationships.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar%27s_number

Canadian author and journalist Malcolm Gladwell discusses the Dunbar number in his 2000 book The Tipping Point. Gladwell describes the company W. L. Gore and Associates, now known for the Gore-Tex brand. By trial and error, the leadership in the company discovered that if more than 150 employees were working together in one building, different social problems could occur. The company started building company buildings with a limit of 150 employees and only 150 parking spaces. When the parking spaces were filled, the company would build another 150-employee building. Sometimes these buildings would be placed only short distances apart.

Derivatives: Financial Instruments or Gambling?

This is a question that has been peculating since the 1980's.

The government recruited Professor Laurence Gower (The Gower Report) in 1981 to consider new legislation covering the level of statutory investor protection and whether law changes should be made to improve consumer protection. 

"Is this really just gaming, or a regulated market" question for instruments like LIFFE's was live at the Whitehall/DTI level in 1982, running in parallel with LIFFE's launch — and it took until the January 1985 White Paper and the November 1986 Financial Services Act for the gaming/wagering exemption to be legislated.

Gower's report fed into a January 1985 white paper, and the Financial Services Act followed, receiving royal assent in November 1986

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gower_Report

There is also some great debate on the topic in Hansard:

I do not know why Chinese walls are so called, but I have visited the Great Wall of China. It has this characteristic: It has never kept anybody in or out. It is merely an immensely big and long wall and every time a wave of invaders crossed it, the wall was made longer and bigger.

I went on a bitterly cold day in January when the wind was howling across the wall and I had to hang on to my fur hat. I did not dare stop because various British statesmen, including the Prime Minister, had niches marking the points that they had reached. I was determined to get as far as they had before stopping. Otherwise I would have turned back. My interpreter said to me, "Mr. Tapsell, this bitter wind is the only free gift that China has ever had from Russia". I tell my right hon. Friend that a chill wind will blow across his Chinese walls to the Treasury during the next few years.

https://hansard.parliament.uk/commons/1984-07-16/debates/bda28bbe-d5af-4308-b3d4-8ba8992af151/InvestorProtection(GowerReport)#contribution-201cf618-e79b-49b6-b242-19a412c536f9

...and what was the gating point?
The guarantee of contract performance, often with the use of a CCP to mange the counterparty risk.
(see also MiFID Art 47 e) : https://www.esma.europa.eu/publications-and-data/interactive-single-rulebook/mifid-ii/article-47-organisational-requirements )





Industry Links:

Womble Bond Dixon do an excellent UK regulatory roundup. I recommend dialling in to their quarterly updates.
I don't know what happened to MLROs.com (website now for sale), but Emma (https://www.linkedin.com/in/emma-radmore-3ba06b26/) does a great job in keeping the MLRO community engaged and active.
https://www.financialinstitutionsnews.com/

APPG: Register of All-Party Parliamentary Groups.
At one stage, I held great hope for APPGs. I thought they would be a perfect conduit for Government Policy to meet (and award even minor contracts) to practitioners.
There are a lot of APPGs.
https://www.parliament.uk/mps-lords-and-offices/standards-and-financial-interests/parliamentary-commissioner-for-standards/registers-of-interests/register-of-all-party-party-parliamentary-groups/

Greengage, do a great report, Tracking UK Parliamentary Engagement with Digital Assets, which looks at who is walking the talk.
https://www.greengage.co/digital-parliamentarians-3rd-edition/



ESMA's Interactive Rulebook(s).

Can't recommend this highly enough.
https://www.esma.europa.eu/publications-and-data/interactive-single-rulebook