The SEC issues fines. To them it's taking a cut, to Binance etc, it's operating expenses.

These "enforcements" are more like protection money paid to gangsters. The SEC could have created clarity a decade ago.

It's not in their interest to do so, plain and simple. They are incentivised financially, to persist in creating a lack of clarity, and then randomly "enforcing" inconsistently to extract multi-millions off of effectively approved profits.

If / when they refer cases to the DoJ, it's different. But, typically they don't, because typically most of the players they're going after are doing their best to comply with the "uncompliable" landscape they are facing. Or - they're FTX.

And let's just remember that, always. The SEC, effectively, gave FTX a green light. Maybe the most damaging crypto fail in history likely an outright fraud, of massive proportions and where was the SEC? That's what we're dealing with here.