Another way to look at this is that the SEC offered Coinbase the opportunity to stop doing something illegal and walk away before the SEC brought the hammer down. That was a pretty good offer. These are criminal offenses.
Coinbase didn't. So, hammer time: Washington D.C., June 6, 2023 — The Securities and Exchange Commission today charged Coinbase, Inc. with operating its crypto asset trading platform as an unregistered national securities exchange, broker, and clearing agency. The SEC also charged Coinbase for failing to register the offer and sale of its crypto asset staking-as-a-service program."
Much of the US crypto industry had two great hopes for getting away with it. First, that they could get Congress to legalize what they were doing. Second, that they could get the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, instead of the Securities and Exchage Commission, to regulate crypto. The first possibility disappeared politically after the FTX scams were exposed, FTX went bankrupt, and politicians who accepted their campaign donations were in political trouble. The second disappeared when the SEC and the CFTC, with help from the Justice Department and the FBI, all landed on Binance, and started asking hard questions about where the customer's money was.
These companies are in deep trouble for a very simple and classic form of financial crime - treating the customer's money as their own. This is not about "tech". This is not about "crypto". This is not about "financial innovation". This is about plain old theft.