Please read the actual Petition for Rulemaking Coinbase filed in July 2022. It is extensively footnoted about how the "decades of case law" don't apply to this new thing that has only existed for 1.3 decades and was designed around the existing laws on purpose.

That is, read it if you actually want to understand the situation.

(PDF) https://assets.ctfassets.net/c5bd0wqjc7v0/5NRidtW8lvwVEfSHpn...

I skimmed the document to go directly to the questions Coinbase is asking, and really, the first question is:

> Are the Howey and Reves tests the appropriate tests for determining whether digital assets are securities?

Which makes it pretty clear to me that a) Coinbase is aware that the Howey test applies to cryptocurrencies, b) Coinbase is aware that many cryptocurrencies are likely to be classified as securities requiring registration by the Howey test, and c) they want the SEC to change its regulatory position so that is not the case. Skimming many of the remaining questions, it is striking that Coinbase isn't complaining about a lack of clarity in the current regulations, they're complaining about what the current regulations require them to do.

So...just going to skip the part about actually reading the footnotes? I just want to be clear on whether to consider you to be someone who has taken the time to inform themselves about the matter.

Coinbase's opinion on the matter is pretty irrelevant to determining what is and isn't a security. The fact that they tried to get the SEC to tell them what they were doing was or wasn't allowed (never mind the fact the SEC likely had an ongoing investigation that prevented them from commenting in the first place) is wholly irrelevant to the fact they were actively breaking the law.

At your behest, I did go to the footnotes. And my read of the footnotes is not that they're an extensive citation of case law to justify their points. (There's just 5 cases cited). Most of the footnotes are citations to various other exhortations that essentially amount to "we think existing financial regulations are too onerous for cryptocurrency companies, please loosen them." Again, there's very little "we think the regulations are unclear," but rather a lot of "we can't do what we want to do under these regulations, please loosen them."