Every Friday, Law Decoded delivers analysis on the week’s critical stories in the realms of policy, regulation and law.

Editor’s note

One day in the not-so-distant future, the curious experience of episodic television with its week-by-week gaps will be a weird thing that old people strain themselves not to talk about around the youths, until they eventually get, like, really old and stop caring and start turning all of the logistical inconveniences of their early memories into little moral parables. And by “they,” I mean me. And I’m looking forward to it.

It’s possible that entertainment’s on-demand, all-the-time availability is a pipeline to an obsession with news (and maybe professional sports). They are the last stories that make us wait. Where else do you find a cliffhanger these days?

For example, today is also the day that we learn that the person the world assumed to have ordered the torture and death of Jamal Khashoggi in fact did order the torture and death of Jamal Khashoggi.

The big policy stories in crypto this week are also long-anticipated events, must-see episodes to drawn-out dramas. And though, after a while, all big events start to look linked, crypto has seen a set of especially fascinating plot points reaching conclusions.