According to Vlad from Robinhood, as said in Clubhouse interview with E. Musk, there is discretionary (i.e. arbitrary) part of the collateral requirement set by NSCC.
Initially NSCC asked RH for $3 billion in collateral which RH didn't have and they managed to negotiate it down to $700 million, which they did have.
Which begs the question: if $3 billion was required by Dodd-Frank, then did NSCC commit securities fraud by agreeing to lower it to $700 million?
And if $700 million was enough to satisfy Dodd-Frank, then why did they ask for $3 billion initially?
And what if $500 would be enough? Or $200 million?
Or maybe Dodd-Frank doesn't dictate collateral requirements on an individual stock at all?
Given that, it isn't outside of realms of possibility that raising of collateral requirements had additional objectives other than simply limiting risk on the system (which, I should mention, was very, very real - in case RH went bankrupt). Normal people won't have any way to know.
To turn it around: should they have the authority to enforce a 33.3x collateral increase with no oversight simply because they feel it's necessary for the world to stop trading GME? This is the heart of what I hope will be regulated.
BTW, playing whiskey slaps was fun. It was nice to see the crazy pentester world, even if I had wrong expectations going in. Hope you've been well!