https://www.sec.gov/files/dlt-framework.pdf

It's only a few pages, and nothing in it indicates that decentralization is sufficient as an excluding criterion.

> Although no one of the following characteristics of use or consumption is necessarily determinative, the stronger their presence, the less likely the Howey test is met:

You can't just cherrypick the words that you want to hear in a sentence, exclude all the other words, and claim that the SEC gave the green-light to decentralized crypto! In fact, nearly all of the exculpatory characteristics listed just below that paragraph focus on the utility value of a crypto token, as opposed to its speculative value! The real versus speculative value (Storing data on filecoin, versus trading filecoin around) is what's most important to the SEC, not how decentralized the network is!

... Also, most crypto is ridiculously centralized, and if Coinbase listed even one of the problem tokens, they are... Running an illegal securities exchange.

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[1] Read the actual SEC guidance, and try to square it with this quote by Jai Massari, the author of that op-ed:

> First set out in a 2018 speech by SEC Corporation Finance Division Director William Hinman, and then described in more detail in 2019 staff guidance,[6] the core idea is that where a blockchain project is sufficiently decentralized, the cryptoasset associated with the project will not be or represent an “investment contract” under the so-called Howey test,

If that's what she gets out of the SEC document (linked above), Jai doesn't have the reading comprehension of a high-schooler[2], let alone one that's appropriate for a 'visiting lecturer' at Berkeley!

[2] What she seems to have is an incredibly motivated reading comprehension. The same kind of motivated reading comprehension that's currently landing Coinbase into hot water.