Stablecoins, a form of crypto-currencies, have come under increasing regulatory scrutiny. The justification for this arises by analogizing the stablecoins to banknotes issued in the early nineteenth century during a period known as the free-banking era. During that era, banks in many states were...

Archegos Capital Management, at its height, had $20 billion in assets. But in the spring of 2021, in part through its use of total return swaps, Archegos sparked a $30 billion dollar sell-off that left many of the world’s largest banks footing the bill. Mitsubishi UFJ Group estimated a loss of...

The present article contains a brief but comprehensive overview of the development of the Capital Markets Union (CMU) project in the EU to further deepen EU capital markets’ integration. After the Introduction, it first discusses the Commission’s 2015 CMU Action Plan and its follow-up,...

The ECSPR covers only financial-return crowdfunding-FRC. Nonetheless, crowdfunding goes beyond monetary incentives: reward-based and donation-based crowdfunding represent the ‘other side of the moon’ in the crowdfunding universe. The Chapter, after describing the main features of...

This Chapter discusses the regulatory, legislative and institutional framework for two capital-based macroprudential instruments, i.e. the Capital Conservation Buffer (hereinafter: CCoB) and the Countercyclical Capital Buffer (hereinafter: CCyB). At the outset, a brief historical background...

Marketplace lending, enabled by technological innovation, represents a new opportunity for raising capital. It is regarded by the EU as having the potential to expand the financing options of SMEs and improve the integration of the Internal Capital Market. However, applying traditional legal...

The report presents new insights and data on stablecoins, an innovative and rapidly evolving sector of the cryptocurrency ecosystem. Stablecoins, as the name suggests, are cryptocurrencies that are designed to minimize price volatility. The findings in this research study build on an earlier...

Clearinghouses are systemic nodes in financial markets that handle trillions of dollars’ worth of transactions. Yet, these critical market infrastructures stand on fragile foundations. The Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform Act of 2010, the sweeping financial reform that followed the 2008 financial...

This paper takes stock of borrower-based measures (BBMs) put in place in EU Member States up until March 2023, looking into the main categories of BBMs and their combinations. It also analyses the legislative framework for enacting BBMs in Greece, as recently enacted by means of an amendment to...

Crowdfunding has been regarded as a useful tool to meet consumers’ and SMEs’ financing needs as well as investors’ need for diversified alternative investments finance and desire for a more ‘democratic’ financial system. It has also been presented as a form of ‘disintermediated’...