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Preemption, Blue-Sky Laws, and the Fight Over Who Regulates Digital Assets. Congress came within reach this past week of enacting the first comprehensive framework for regulating cryptocurrencies and, more broadly, digital assets. It did not get there. Below we review where that legislation stands and examine the obstacle we believe will decide its fate: federalism.

Following the SEC’s June 2026 release of its Draft Strategic Plan for FY 2026–2030 and its February 2026 updates to the Enforcement Manual, the Commission has opened the door for public comment on how its processes should operate. Nick Morgan and Tom Zaccaro sit down with securities practice leader and outside general counsel Kimble Charles Cannon to highlight a critical area ripe for reform: Regulation by Delay.

Marble, Founder and CEO of Going Public, joined ICAN co-hosts Nick Morgan, Mark Hiraide, and Dara Albright on a recent episode of the Capital Ideas podcast to make that case. Going Public is an interactive streaming platform built around Regulation Crowdfunding (Reg CF) and Regulation A+ (Reg A) offerings, where viewers can watch companies raise capital in real time and invest alongside the story directly through the platform.

we cover: • The Empty Victory Thesis: Why dropping the requirement to prove investor harm doesn't solve the SEC's requirement to actually return collected money to real victims. • The Treasury Logjam: A deep-dive look into the $5.2 billion vault of collected, but completely undistributed, regulatory penalties. • The Counterparty Conundrum: Why identifying a true "victim" breaks down completely in complex scenarios like insider trading and open-market manipulation. • The Pf

The SEC exists to protect investors. This protection should be the bedrock of our free and fair markets. That's the premise behind every rule the SEC writes and every case it brings. But a very different picture begins to emerge when you look closely at the actions of the regulatory agency and ask a simple question: Who does this protect? A series of recent Unchained Markets Substack posts do just that.

From submitting landmark amicus briefs at the Supreme Court to representing clients targeted by unprecedented enforcement theories, this retrospective proves why a public interest law firm like ICAN is vital for the health of America's capital markets.

The Justices clearly acknowledged the issue of victimless disgorgement—the very issue ICAN has been fighting since our founding. Sripetch simply did not give them the right case to rule on it. The right case will put that question squarely before the Justices. And we have the cases to do it—at different stages, but each the right kind of case for this moment.

"Societies that stop admiring builders eventually stop producing them." For generations, the American spirit was anchored by the entrepreneur - the true conductors of the prosperity train. Today, that foundational narrative is fading, and the barriers keeping ordinary people from participating in free enterprise are multiplying.

Every time the SEC proposes a new rule under the Administrative Procedure Act, it kicks off a massive battle for influence through public comment letters. But once those letters are submitted, what actually happens inside the regulatory black box? In this episode of SEC Roundup, Nick Morgan and Tom Zaccaro welcome Professor Gabriel Voelcker (Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth) and Professor Gabriel Pündrich (Warrington College of Business at the University of Florida).

The Ten-Year Hibernation: How the SEC completely ignored its own internal rule to decide SRO appeals within 10 months, stretching it to a full decade. • Weaponized Delay: The severe financial, competitive, and reputational toll exacted on a firm when forced into prolonged regulatory stagnation. • The SRO Double Standard: How self-regulatory organizations like the NYSE and FINRA alternate between claiming they are private entities to evade the Constitution, while functioni

For most of its history, the SEC operated with what Vanderbilt Law Professor Amanda Rose calls "de facto power" — a vast influence built not through formal laws, but through "soft" regulatory levers like no-action letters and safe harbors. These mechanisms allowed the agency to micromanage the capital markets while avoiding the transparency and accountability requirements of the Administrative Procedure Act.

Former SEC Attorneys Ask Supreme Court to End 50-Year "Gag Rule" as Justices Weigh SEC Disgorgement Power in Sripetch Amicus brief filed by ICAN in Powell v. SEC argues the agency charged with stamping out misleading omissions has itself operated "the most sweeping compelled-omission regime in federal regulatory practice."

In the past several days, ICAN was at the U.S. Supreme Court for oral arguments in SEC v. Sripetch. We saw one of our own clients' cases—J.D. Jordan's—dismissed on the eve of those arguments. We filed a new amicus brief in Powell v. SEC challenging the SEC's decades-old "Gag Rule." And we saw FINRA formally adopt the reforms to the Pattern Day Trader rule that ICAN had publicly pushed for, with our comment letter cited in the SEC's approval order.

What is this costing the rest of us? The SEC is a federal agency funded by American taxpayers, created to protect investors and maintain the integrity of our markets. Cases like these are not that. There are years of agency resources, attorney hours, and taxpayer dollars spent pursuing individuals for technical violations—without fraud, without victims—that erode the confidence in participating in our markets. When financial professionals become familiar with how the SEC

The SEC's Case Was Unconstitutional From the Start. Now It Wants a Federal Court to Enforce Its Order Anyway. ICAN and co-counsel Vartabedian Katz Hester Haynes file opposition challenging the SEC's attempt to enforce a constitutionally tainted order against a Texas retiree who harmed no one

Key topics include: the expansion of the Wells response period from two to four weeks; the new requirement that the division director personally approve every Wells notice issued nationwide; fresh written guidance explaining how meaningful cooperation — including remediation — can result in zero monetary penalties for entities; the reinstatement of the efficient practice of considering statutory "bad actor" waiver requests simultaneously with settlements.

It is worth noting that our Barry case, and our amicus brief, were cited by SCOTUSblog as presenting an even more compelling version of the issue at stake in Sripetch, one that could “amplify the court’s skepticism toward the expanding scope of disgorgement.”

The SEC’s AI Task Force: Insights into how the Chief AI Officer is wrangling complex data sets and the potential for an "SEC ChatGPT" to drive investigations. • "Investigative Slop": the risk of staff attorneys over-relying on AI to generate mass subpoenas, potentially leading to lower-quality, inefficient investigations. • The "Ingredients" Problem: Why AI is only as good as the data fed into it and the risks of marrying modern technology with antiquated financial systems.

Host Nick Morgan (ICAN) sits down with Sarah Concannon (Quinn Emanuel), Professor Kevin Douglas (Michigan State), and JW Verret (George Mason) to identify the "sleeper" cases that will define 2026. This episode provides a deep dive into the legal theories the SEC is using to expand its reach and the pushback coming from the courts.

pitfalls of well-intentioned government action, the unintended consequences of over-regulation, and the often-overlooked ways markets self-correct. From the collapse of Theranos and Madoff’s Ponzi scheme to the rise of Uber and the case for deregulating the legal profession, Cliff makes the case that markets are more dynamic, more accountable, and often better equipped to solve real-world problems than bureaucracy