> and frankly seems like whataboutism
I hate this new trend of dismissing tangential points as "whataboutism" -- this is simply a question of priorities. It's inane to prioritize blockchain regulation when even the markets (you know, the ones we've had for a few hundred years now) aren't regulated as heavily, which was the point.
The markets are heavily regulated; you were complaining about someone (seemingly) getting away with insider trading. It's completely irrelevant to the topic under discussion, which was that blockchain-based solutions have been escaping traditional securities regulations. Deciding that blockchains should be a free space for crime because, hey, someone else gets away with a different criminal activity, so what's the point of having laws? is the textbook definition of whataboutism.
As I mentioned, it's a matter of priorities, not whataboutism. We should fix the financial system: how about we start with Citizens United, with lobbying in Washington, with more stringent insider trading rules, etc.? This (definitionally) should be of a higher priority than the blockchain—if we really care about fixing the financial system. Lamenting that the blockchain might get "regulatory favors" when the government spent $700 billion bailing out the banks in 2008 is so tone-deaf it's almost in poor taste.
I think you may be misunderstanding these terms. I read "transfer network" as referring to how banks transfer funds between each other, not as a specific kind of network technology, and there is most definitely a role for law and policy in establishing how independent financial institutions interact with one another in account holders' interests. I read "financial consolidation" here as referring to the consolidation of financial institutions, and Congress and regulatory authorities for sure have a role to play in determining what constitutes a monopoly or monopsony in the financial sector.
Interoperability and anticompetitive mergers are absolutely (though not exclusively) policy problems.
> How about we first solve the problem of congresspeople actively trading the very markets they're supposed to police?
I mean, sure? Let's ban senators and reps from holding individual securities; I won't argue with that. But that seems orthogonal to a discussion of whether a particular industry should be exempt from regulation (and frankly seems like whataboutism).