That's completely irrelevant. It's not the job of the SEC to guide companies/people on what constitutes securities. Their job is to bring enforcement action if they believe the law is being broken.
If you want legal advice, get a lawyer. If you don't want an expensive court case to determine who is in the right, don't do business in areas without established case law.
I guess the judiciary system will eventually rule on what is legal / not legal via a legal contest, but courts are not actively informing and guiding American companies on what the rules are.
Seems like there should be an agency that does? Furthermore, the SEC does seem to fulfill some of this role, ie. registering securities.
Guess that's how the world works then; do something until the government sues you, go to court and set precedent. Seems a bit inefficient. Or maybe its the most efficient path after all.
USA was doing very well before FTC was created in 1914. In fact, most of American wealth that the US has been riding on, was accumulated before then. Airplane, Ford Model T, etc where all created before then.
The very next paragraph goes into specific details wrt/ how Celsius allegedly lied to their clients.
"The agency said Celsius engaged in "risky trading practices" and made uncollateralized loans, despite telling investors that it did not. The company also falsely claimed to have raised $50 million from selling its token, and claimed to have 1 million active users when in fact it had only around 500,000 depositors, many of whom were no longer active, the SEC said."
Securities or not, selling something while knowingly lying to buyers about what it is they are purchasing is fraud.
Mashinsky is a conman. This has nothing to do with the SEC being coy about whether BTC is a security and everything to do with Mashinsky lying to his customers about the risk involved in investing through Celsius. Here's a clip of him getting called out on his lies in a debate with a Bitcoin hater:
