What would happen if inexpensive flying cars hit the market tomorrow? Wouldn’t it be great if you could just fly right over stop signs and red lights on the ground or avoid traffic jams? But soon there would be a disastrous crash, and authorities would ground everyone while they figured out what to do. Meanwhile, flying car owners would quickly learn that new technologies don’t make them magically immune to liability in tort and criminal negligence. In this scenario, flying car owners and the companies that manufactured them should have looked into air traffic laws that have always applied.

Something like this has happened in the cryptocurrency industry. Because cryptocurrency is so new, many people have assumed they were not subject to the traditional rules, a rich new area to be quickly exploited before the authorities showed up to rein things in. But there have always been laws to regulate it, which have gone ignored by those treating crypto like a modern-day gold rush. Many people ...more