Yeah it’s a very similar situation. TLDR, they both started selling the token long before it actually existed, the token being totally controlled by one company, based on promises that they would build stuff later, to mass market US investors. All those are red flags for SEC action.

SEC didn't care when ethereum did exactly that-- created 72 million tokens out of thin air and sold 80% of them to the general public long before any system existed to make use of them.

That's true, or at least the SEC doesn't seem likely to go after Ethereum. It's hard to say for sure what exactly the difference is.

It seems like the SEC is intentionally not being clear about what they find acceptable and what they find unacceptable. I don't know whether this is because they are just slow about things, or whether they want to keep their options open because why not, or what.

It would be nice to have crisp, clear rules about how to create a new token that is considered a commodity in the US.

Or because there is potentially a conflict of interests?

It's not too hard to imagine that SEC staffers have an interest in some of the things they're not going after and don't have an interest in things that they are.

In particular, it sure seems to me that surprises in SEC enforcement seem oddly correlated with the offerings that I know were really liberal in handing out premined coins to 'advisors'.

But mah decentralization