But the messaging surrounding the suits makes the SEC’s recent moves seem reactive, political and frankly, just beneath the bluster, weak. Specifically, the SEC seems to be trying to put Coinbase and Binance into the same bucket as the frauds of 2022, such as Luna, Celsius and above all FTX. The SEC has been widely viewed as giving FTX deferential treatment before it was revealed as a massive fraud, so now it’s demonstrating that it really can be a hard-nosed regulator – it’s just doing so a couple of years late, and to the wrong targets.