Crypto has, for years, been held by "the elite" -- and Andreessen et al. are exactly using it as a system to commit securities fraud.
The direction of wealth flow in crypto is from late retail entrants to billionaire major holders who cash out using late entrants.
The idea that the SEC, post-collapse-after-collapse, is here to "protect JP Morgan"... i mean, this is a patent lie, misdirection, and act of desperation in trying to set up the SEC as the scapegaot for this exploitative system's failure.
They created a situation in which they can choose winners and losers and people are surprised that they're viewed as corrupt?
Asinine.
This is the problem with this area: lots of finance guys with no csci experience; lots of csci guys dumb on finance.
Anyone who has enough experience of both worlds runs a mile from all of this, and can see the toxic mixture of IT hype, finance "collectables mania", and grift.
The SEC is just catching up to how much the finance industry has been duped by bros-in-shorts talking about "algorithms"
The SEC created a situation by which any action could be deemed criminal and only decided to regulate when it was politically expedient to do so.
There is no reason to believe they are doing this on behalf of protecting investors, because investors have consistently asked for clarity and the SEC refused to do so, and are only now going after the large exchanges after a rash of traditional finance banking failures.
For all of the criticisms against crypto, there is zero reason to believe the SEC is operating in good faith because they have shown time and time again they are not.
The SEC here is acting perhaps the fastest ever to the development of a new financial instrument.
The howey test was always clear to everyone invovled. The whole "SEC hasnt said anything yet" is a line used by liars to cover-up and distract from their patent fraud -- which takes place, not coincidently, off-shore. Every investigation so far has yielded plenty of internal chats to the effect of 'lol this is illegal lol lol'. No one here was in the dark, that's why everyone has redflags out-the-wazoo.
The background historical context here is also that gov cannot been seen to stifle new tech, and has to "give it its fair shot" absent regulation. Or else be blamed for its failure.
I think it's frankly obscene after the fraud-after-fraud-after-fraud that is the entire crypto system, that any body would pin anything on the SEC.
This is yet another lie designed to distract form the last 13 years of failure -- all the crypto system has done is breed massive amounts of fraud, money laundering, ransomware and the most industrialised grift in human history.
The SEC has not failed here one iota in comparison to this industrialised con.