Everyone's reading Uyeda's comments as "SEC admits it was corrupt." I read it different: the agency knew half those cases against crypto firms in early 2025 wouldn't survive a real courtroom, so they folded before a judge could embarrass them publicly. That's not mercy. That's a tell. The bar prosecutors set for "case we can actually win" is way higher than the bar for "case we can threaten a founder with for 18 months." A lot of those dropped cases were never about law, they were about attrition, legal fees, and burning teams out before trial. Uyeda basically confirmed that from the inside. So the real story isn't leniency toward crypto. It's that the enforcement playbook for the next cycle just got exposed to every builder watching. If the cases don't hold up in court, why were they filed at all... that's the question nobody in DC wants to answer this week. Curious who else caught that quote and read it the same way.