Or put another way the issue is less whether they are security and more whether, if they are, they can actually become a registered one instead of an unregistered one. They can’t. And there’s no real moral justification claiming that the laws or regulations as they stand are morally correct for crypto projects. They basically marry a combination of a typical company and an open source project and they need a new framework.
Discussion
Oh I see, thanks for the explanation. Thus far most of what I'm hearing is that they're not securities, whereas your point is that if we assume that they are, they've been given no mechanism to register as such, which is a totally fair argument. To be clear, looking back at the FTX, Luna, etc debacle, the SEC is not blameless in the least for all this - they claim to be interested in consumer protection but have done zero in this space in that respect. I think Jack Mallers said it best that the SEC can either do their job and provide regulatory clarity and protect consumers like they say or they can stfu and let the market figure it out.
Yeah. I’d read this as I think it sums up the catch-22 they are in and also why otherwise good faith actors in the space have avoided talking with the SEC. https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2022-09-08/gary-gensler-wants-to-regulate-crypto
Btw, Matt Levine, the author of that piece, basically sums it up the same way. 