>Crypto exchanges are completely unregulated

Cryptocurrencies are far from unregulated[1].

[1]https://coincenter.org/entry/cryptocurrencies-are-far-from-u...

Crypto exchange operators could and likely look at their own books and trade against their customers (insider trading).

Manipulating customer margin calls becomes trivial if you can look at the books and calculate if buying/selling x amount of the order book will margin call y amount of funds and decide its worth it.

Being licensed as a money transmitter has nothing to do with with crypto trading regulation. In fact many of those licenses explicitly state such:

>Coinbase, Inc. is licensed by the Virginia State Corporation Commission as a money transmitter, but such license does not cover the transmission of virtual currency

On top of that, we're talking about the big players like Bitfinex, who created USDT simply so they didn't have to comply with any sort of banking laws, let alone securities trading regulations.

Your claim was that cryptocurrency exchanges "are completely unregulated" which by own you admission isn't accurate because there are many exchanges that are mandated by regulations to register with FinCEN as a MSB. It's correct that there are many exchanges where the exchange clearing / trading isn't regulated.

Ok, trading is completely unregulated. When we are talking about exchanges we are generally talking about what they are designed to do (trade) not details about how a small amount get USD onto their platform.

Even so, these so called regulations you point to don't exist on the biggest exchanges like Bitfinex, Binance, or even Poloniex. Poloniex pulled out of states once licenses started being required to deposit USD.