In the U.S. at least, anyone dealing in things financial has to be very careful not to violate any number of laws involving money handling, banking, insurance,

In the U.S. at least, anyone dealing in things financial has to be very careful not to violate any number of laws involving money handling, banking, insurance, securities etc. It's not enough to say 'we don't do that' or 'we're not a registered X and therefore not required to do Y'. If a relevant government agency decides you are an unregistered X, or otherwise violating the law, be prepared for an expensive multi-year legal fight and most likely to lose unless you are really doing something completely new that actually isn't like the old thing[1] they are tasked with regulating/enforcing. I'm actually quite surprised that some of these scams (stablecoins being one example[2]) have been allowed to go on as long as they have. [1] i.e. buying you at least a temporary reprieve as all you're winning is the argument that that particular law doesn't apply to you, not that they won't pass a new law and come after you using it. [2] It sure looks to me like they're pretending to be defacto banks issuing their own defacto dollars and not so subtly assuring 'investors' a rate of return. The combination of these factors have historically been all but guaranteed to get damn near every agency of the govt on your ass.