There is regulatory clarity now, just not the kind they want. They are no different from other financial institutions, and have to abide with all the same rules. They can't market unregistered securities to retail investors. That it is difficult to comply with because of the distributed nature is irrelevant.
What would you call it when regulators can't agree with each other and are prone to sudden major shifts in thinking, if not a lack of regulatory clarity?
The regulatory agencies aren't there to help you find a way to do business legally, that's a job for your lawyers. If there is not established case law, then you're risking very expensive trials.
Normal financial firms trading normal financial products deal with this all the time and are very familiar with jurisdictional disputes between their regulators. For example every US bank is more than familiar with keeping the OCC and their state Fed happy. This is BAU in US bank regulation.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/gary-genslers-bitcoin-land-grab...
Their strategy seems to be to go after smaller fish, governance tokens, ICO tokens etc: things which the exchanges have clearly marketed as investments. Since all the exchanges have traded some of these they don’t have to press the matter about Eth and bitcoin so they don’t run the risk of losing that.