Discussions on the regulation of decentralised finance (“DeFi”) have picked up pace over the past year. In the vein of the Financial Stability Board’s “same risk, same activity, same regulation” framework for regulating digital assets, many regulators have turned to the concept of activity-based regulation when looking at DeFi, stating that obligations apply to regulated activities even if they are decentralized.

The International Organization of Securities Commissions (IOSCO) has offered more specific recommendations on how supervisory oversight could be applied in its proposed policy recommendations for decentralized finance. The recommendations centre around the concept of ‘responsible persons’, who may be subject to regulation for DeFi arrangements, and applying risk management, disclosures and other obligations onto such persons.

In this roundtable, we bring together policymakers and industry participants to discuss possible frameworks for DeFi regulation, covering:
- “Same risk, same activity, same regulation”: How can we bring practical clarity of this concept to the DeFi space?
- Responsible person: Possible models for attributing responsibility in a decentralised environment
- Compliance, decentralised: What do good governance and controls look like for DeFi? 

Over the past year, the cryptocurrency markets have seen a number of high-profile failures, which contributed to a global impetus by major regulators to put forward measures to address the myriad of risks that are present. Crypto winter notwithstanding, regulators continue to seek regulatory outcomes that mitigate the potential for consumer harm.
 
As regulators step up efforts to do this, a key area that has come to attention is the perpetuation of unfair trading practices in cryptocurrency markets. In many cases, unfair trading practices in cryptocurrency markets do not appear dissimilar to those in traditional financial markets, which suggests that regulators could take a leaf out of the securities rulebook.

But the diverse nature of cryptocurrency markets, where transactions take place across various platforms (both on-chain and off-chain), introduces new challenges in putting together the information required to effectively detect and deter unfair trading practices. The panel will discuss how the industry and the regulatory community can work together to address unfair trading practices in crypto markets.