Financial engineers are quite talented in figuring out ways to create things that look like a duck, swim like a duck, and quack like a duck, but definitely are

Financial engineers are quite talented in figuring out ways to create things that look like a duck, swim like a duck, and quack like a duck, but definitely are not ducks in a regulatory sense. And I am not familiar with Californian regulations, but I think there may be some challenges in trying to enforce the regulations if a californian makes a bitcoin deposit to a remote chinese "bank"?