Never getting regulated or licensed. As you know, FTX was regulated and had their licenses did that help any of the customers? I think these are just fancy words in the crypto world.
Yes, to a great extent, it helped their customers. If FTX were an unregistered company, headquartered nowhere, ran by anonymous individuals, and so on, they could have just vanished into thin air with their customers' money without ever facing accountability. As a matter of fact, the reason FTX Japan was so quick in returning users' funds is the country's tight regulations.
Being a centralized service bounded by nothing at all, exit scam, rug pull, or whatever you call it would be very handy. If it's hard to trust a registered centralized exchange, it must be a lot harder trusting an unregistered one. And since you're asking how not to run into legal issues, compliance is a must.