> when faced with ambiguity about jurisdiction it's better to ask for forgiveness than permission

Genuinely curious what has given you that impression. Regulators have been insanely slow to act on crypto (and there’s no regulatory overreach here).

In general, it’s a meme that regulators are slow to act and often without any teeth.

> In practical terms, who's stopping them?

Courts? Pretty basic principle of how democratic systems are built.

Not so, at least in the U.S. and Canada. As per "Chevron deference" the courts are bound to defer to regulatory agencies over how to interpret ambiguous areas of the law:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chevron_U.S.A.,_Inc._v._Natura....