Securities Enforcement. Corporate Investigations. Financial Regulation.
Independent analysis of the laws, regulations, investigations, and enforcement actions shaping modern financial markets.
BRAEDEN ANDERSON
Braeden is one of the top securities lawyers in the country and was recognized by Best Lawyers: Ones to Watch® in America in the Financial Services Regulation Law and Securities Regulation categories. This honor is awarded to only the top 2% of attorneys in the United States and is based on a comprehensive peer-review survey.
Braeden helped lead Gesmer Updegrove to recognition in The Legal 500 United States for Corporate Investigations & White Collar Crime, Tier 3, and Finance: Fintech, Tier 4.
Braeden is active in the U.S. securities enforcement community through Securities Docket, where he has served on the 2025 and 2026 Advisory Boards and contributed video commentary through the Weekly Update.
Braeden was named the #1 United States author in FinTech in Mondaq’s Spring 2025 Thought Leadership Awards, reflecting the national reach and influence of his writing on fintech, securities regulation, and digital asset policy.
Money Transmitter Licenses 101
If your product accepts value from one person and moves it to another person or location, you may be a money transmitter. That status triggers federal MSB registration and, in most states, a money transmitter license. Read more…
SEC Says State Trust Companies Can Custody Crypto
In my recent YouTube video, I discuss how the SEC is beginning to align its custody framework for digital assets with industry practice. The SEC’s Division of Investment Management has issued a no-action letter confirming that certain state-chartered trust companies may serve as qualified custodians for digital assets and related cash equivalents under the Investment Advisers Act and the Investment Company Act.
SEC Restores Simultaneous Consideration Policy for Settlement and Waiver
This article and embedded video discusses the recent policy shift at the SEC regarding simultaneous consideration of settlement offers and related waiver requests in enforcement actions. The policy change reverses a 2021 decision under prior leadership that had required waiver requests to be considered separately, only after a settlement was finalized.
Digital Asset Securities: A Legal Field Guide for Builders
This session is a practical briefing on digital-asset and tokenized-securities market structure—what’s real today, what’s changing, and how to launch and operate on compliant rails. The talk is led by Braeden Anderson, Partner at Gesmer Updegrove LLP and head of the firm’s Securities Enforcement & Investigations practice. He represents public companies, fintechs, broker-dealers/ATSs, and founders with a focus on digital-asset and tokenized-securities market structure, offering design, custody and transfer-agent frameworks, and secondary trading issues
SEC to Host Roundtable on the Order Protection Rule: Revisiting Two Decades of Reg NMS
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission will host a public roundtable on September 18, 2025 to examine the Order Protection Rule (Rule 611 of Regulation NMS), and its analogues in the listed options markets. The discussion will focus on the rule’s longstanding “trade-through” prohibitions, which require trading centers to establish reasonable policies and procedures designed to prevent trades from occurring at prices inferior to protected quotations, subject to a web of exceptions.