1. Crypto Regulatory Update: The CFTC Just Asked Fintechs What's Blocking Them From Banking

On June 16, 2026, the CFTC issued a Request for Information asking fintech firms — including crypto-native ones — to identify exactly which CFTC rules, guidance documents, no-action letters, and orders make it unduly hard to partner with federally regulated banks, or needlessly slow down the application process.

This isn't a standalone gesture. It's the CFTC executing on Executive Order 14405, "Integrating Financial Technology Innovation into Regulatory Frameworks," signed May 19, 2026, which directs seven agencies — Treasury, the SEC, the CFTC, the OCC, the FDIC, the NCUA, and the CFPB — to find and report on rules that impede fintech innovation, with findings due back to the President within 180 days.

The RFI publishes in the Federal Register on June 18, opening a 21-day comment window. That puts the deadline around July 9, 2026.

Why it matters for founders: If a bank has turned down your company, slow-walked a partnership application, or cited a rule that predates your product category, this is the moment to put that in writing. What gets filed in the next three weeks shapes the guidance, interpretive letters, and possibly the formal rulemaking that follows — and the CFTC won't be the last agency to ask.

Launch Legal's General Counsel & Regulatory Strategy practice tracks exactly these windows — aligning client operations with FinCEN, SEC, and CFTC frameworks as they move.

📌 Source: PYMNTS: CFTC Seeks Industry Input to Unlock FinTech Innovation | The White House: Executive Order 14405

2. Corporate & Securities Law Update: The SEC's Deregulatory Sprint Picks Up Speed

On June 11, 2026, the SEC proposed rescinding Regulation NMS Rule 611 — the trade-through "order protection" rule — along with the locked-and-crossed-quotation restrictions in Rule 610(e). Both were written in 2005 for a market structure that barely resembles today's fully electronic, automated trading environment. Comments are open for 60 days from Federal Register publication, landing around August 17, 2026.

That follows the SEC's Registered Offering Reform proposal weeks earlier, which would eliminate the $75 million public-float threshold currently required for unlimited use of Form S-3, extend benefits historically reserved for well-known seasoned issuers to a broader range of companies, and let more issuers incorporate information by reference into Form S-1. Comments on that proposal are due July 27, 2026.

Two different rules, one consistent signal: under Chair Atkins, the SEC is stripping back both market-structure friction and offering-process friction at the same time, betting that less prescriptive regulation produces more capital formation.

Why it matters for founders: If a public offering is anywhere on your roadmap, the rules governing how — and how cheaply — you access markets after IPO may look different by the time you get there. And if you're building trading infrastructure, compliance tooling, or anything that touches market structure, two of your core regulatory inputs are open for comment right now, not finalized rules to react to later.

Launch Legal's Fundraising & Securities Compliance practice tracks proposed rule changes like these specifically so clients aren't caught structuring around assumptions that are about to change.

📌 Source: SEC: Proposed Rescission of Regulation NMS Rules 611 and 610(e) | SEC: Transformative Reforms to Registered Offerings

3. From the Launch Legal Bench: Why We're Telling Founders to Stop Choosing Between Reg CF and Reg D

We're seeing more clients run Reg CF and Reg D rounds side by side rather than picking one. That shift tracks a real change in how the SEC has been interpreting Reg CF this year: a set of Compliance and Disclosure Interpretations issued in February clarified that the $5 million annual offering cap under Rule 100(a)(1) is measured on a rolling 12-month basis from each closing date — not from your Form C filing date — and that companies can switch crowdfunding platforms mid-offering if they cancel the original raise and file a fresh Form C. A pending rulemaking petition filed in March asks the Commission to go further and modernize the exemption altogether.

None of that is breaking news anymore, but it changes the math for founders deciding how to structure a raise. A miscalculated rolling cap or a sloppy platform transition doesn't just risk an SEC inquiry — sophisticated investors run diligence on exactly this kind of procedural history before they wire funds into a parallel Reg D round.

That's the structuring work we do most often now: a Reg CF raise for community and customer investors, layered with a Reg D round for institutional checks, built on a cap table designed to survive both sets of rules without contradiction — rather than founders treating the two as mutually exclusive paths.

This is the core of our Startup & Venture Formation and Fundraising & Securities Compliance work: structuring the raise correctly the first time, instead of bolting compliance on after a platform or investor asks an uncomfortable question.

If you're mapping a raise for the next twelve months, schedule a consultation before you file your next Form C — not after.

4. AI & Emerging Tech: The Colorado AI Act Deadline You've Been Tracking No Longer Exists

If you've been counting down to Colorado's AI Act taking effect on June 30, 2026 — stop. On May 14, 2026, Governor Jared Polis signed SB 26-189, which repeals SB 24-205 in full and replaces it with a narrower framework before the original law ever took effect.

Gone: the "high-risk AI system" classification, mandatory risk-management programs, annual impact assessments, and the duty to use reasonable care to prevent algorithmic discrimination. In their place, SB 26-189 regulates automated decision-making technology (ADMT) used in "consequential decisions" through consumer notice requirements, adverse-outcome explanations, meaningful human review, and developer documentation — a materially lighter compliance lift. And it doesn't take effect until January 1, 2027.

The repeal followed a special legislative session where lawmakers couldn't agree on amendments, a lawsuit from xAI challenging the original law on constitutional grounds, and a DOJ intervention on xAI's side — the first time the federal government has sought to invalidate a state AI law.

Federal enforcement, meanwhile, hasn't paused for any of this. The FTC's "Operation AI Comply" filed its thirteenth AI-washing case on May 21, 2026, against marketing companies accused of selling an "AI-powered" tool that, according to the FTC's complaint, didn't exist.

Why it matters: A compliance deadline can disappear faster than your engineering or policy team can build for it. If you adjusted a product, hiring tool, or vendor contract to meet a June 30 deadline that's no longer law, you now have until January 1, 2027 under a lighter — but still real — framework. And regardless of which state law applies to you, the FTC is actively prosecuting AI marketing claims at the federal level right now.

Our General Counsel & Regulatory Strategy practice exists to catch exactly this kind of whiplash before it costs a client engineering hours on a deadline that quietly stopped being real.

📌 Source: Norton Rose Fulbright: Colorado Enacts Revised AI Law | DLA Piper: FTC AI-Washing Action

The Bottom Line

A law everyone was told to prepare for is gone before it ever applied. Two SEC rules nobody has finalized yet are already reshaping how companies think about going public. And a federal agency just asked, in writing, what's blocking fintech innovation. The pattern underneath all of it: the rules are moving faster than the compliance calendars built around them, and the founders who win are the ones checking the actual rule — not the deadline they memorized three weeks ago.