And Coinbase's position is that none of the crypto assets it lists meet that test. For the coins Coinbase lists:

  - Criteria #2 is debatable
  - They don't meet criteria #3
  - Or they don't meet criteria #4

Lots of coins look like commodities. They represent a digital asset, not ownership in a common enterprise or a loan.

Coinbase believes that all of the tokens they list are securities. The SEC will need to tell Coinbase specifically what it believes they are doing wrong. At the very least, if they eventually file suit they will need to make a specific accusation.

It feels like a lot of people have knee-jerk crypto=bad reactions. But read their press release - it really sounds like Coinbase is trying their best to comply with U.S. regulation, and the regulators aren't doing their jobs.

And last - For digital assets that do look like securities, the SEC provides no way to register them, and thus vaguely implies that Americans can't own digital securities. That's not their decision to make - they either have to do their job and regulate crypto securities, or get congress to ban them.