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The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) tore off crypto's bandage this week, with its back-to-back enforcement actions against two of the most prominent digital assets platforms, Binance and Coinbase (COIN), finally establishing its legal argument against the industry and setting up the future court fights that could decide everything.

Apart from the "extensive web of deception" alleged in the securities regulator's lawsuit against Binance, the enforcement double feature also overlapped considerably in the SEC's basic argument against the crypto business model's clash with longstanding securities laws. Virtually every business activity conducted by the crypto platforms needs to be registered with the agency and must follow securities regulations under the watchdog's oversight, the agency contends in these actions and in months of previous enforcement and speeches, and virtually every crypto asset they handle should also be registered as securities.