"Washington D.C., Nov. 8, 2018
The Securities and Exchange Commission today announced settled charges against Zachary Coburn, the founder of EtherDelta, a digital "token" trading platform. This is the SEC's first enforcement action based on findings that such a platform operated as an unregistered national securities exchange."
Do you guys really think sec has any case against EtherDelta founder?
https://www.sec.gov/news/press-release/2018-258He provided a platform for trading (mostly) unregistered securities--he didn't merely write and deploy smart contract code; he maintained a website (UI) and order book and he took fees from each trade. The servers were central points of control/weakness. Open and shut case, I would say.
The SEC might have more difficulty charging the current owners of EtherDelta (which is chugging along just fine!), who I believe are based in China.
We'll probably see anon operators of DEX websites, with devs (if not themselves anon) positioning themselves as sufficiently far 'removed' from the operation of the exchange. Servers positioned in jurisdictions where enforecement is more difficult, etc.