It isn't that the SEC "isn't allowing you to register." It's that crypto exchanges can't/won't properly register.
To put it more abstractly, it makes perfect sense for not all securities to be capable of becoming registered securities.
Coinbase was founded, from day one, to be the most compliant cryptocurrency exchange in the US. They have hired massive teams of former lawmakers and regulators to try to navigate the path to get cleared by the SEC. If Coinbase hasn't been able to do it, how could any other company reasonably expect to do it?
I expect that when Coinbase eventually responds to this, likely in the next few minutes, the response will contain the full timeline of everything they've done to try and register. I've been listening to their lawyers get interviewed on podcasts and seen the countless blog posts they've posted about trying to get anything from the SEC, which has been entirely ignored. It's pretty infuriating. The SEC needs to label Coinbase as some lawless entity that refuses to follow the rules, when nothing could be farther from the truth.
Perhaps the answer is "it can't be done"?
If I tried to start "Uber for Hitmen", and I couldn't find a legal path past regulators, that's because the business model itself is illegal, not because regulators meanly refuse to tell me how to legally murder people.
And yet, despite how they spin it in press releases, their _filing_, which is where the rubber meets the road, says nothing about "figuring out how to register", but rather says that "for many tokens, registering is not possible due to effort involved, or not economically viable" (surprise, surprise, Coinbase doesn't want to absorb the cost of registering securities when it comes to the Shitcoin of the day).
In other words, "we know how to register these tokens as securities - but our business model doesn't make it possible to do so profitably".
> ... if various crypto assets are deemed securities, Coinbase would therefore need to register as a securities exchange, in order to keep offering trading in those assets. ... Furthermore, under current securities law, securities exchanges are not permitted to offer services directly to retail customers, and Coinbase could theoretically be forced to separate the exchange and broker portions of the business.
https://www.cnbc.com/2023/04/18/coinbase-ceo-says-it-is-prep...