Without the SEC, a lot of persons by now may have lost their investment to dubious projects started with the aim of selling poor & short term security to unsuspecting individuals. There's no need for you OP to involve sentiments as i suspect that you maybe love and make use of the services of binance, but the SEC are out to mostly protect customer/user interest and that is their contribution. Authorities like the SEC are contributing to the Blockchain industry by ensuring that Exchanges do not take advantage of the system.
the SEC could do more..
rather then make many policies where exchange businesses have to monitor customers more for things like russian trade, and ban chinese investors because its illegal for chinese citizens to invest in crypto..
. what the SEC should do is legitimise financial insurance companies to be able to take in crypto as collateral to offer insurance policies for exchanges. so that exchanges can have insured accounts for its customers should the exchange go bankrupt/default/just shut down and run off.
. what the SEC should do is legitimise financial auditors where by an auditor can check the 'books' (blockchain) and validate that the exchange is keeping 100% funds in reserve and not doing any fractional reserve practices with customers funds deposited into exchanges custody.
.. or simply force exchanges to display a 'audit' page on their website that shows all their hot/cold wallet addresses and total up the coins held in an exchange. for transparency for all to view