If you rent your apartment out, and receive rent (yield), whoops, your apartment is now a security according to the SEC, and Gensler controls it now

According to the SEC, if anyone receives yield on any asset, that asset suddenly becomes a security!

So millions of people owning apartments for rental income makes all of them operators of unregistered security schemes. It satisfies the Howey rule - the apartment owner receives rent based on the work of the tenant. The owner of the apartment themselves don't do any work to generate the rent, they just bought the apartment and put it out for rent. The tenant pays the rent.

When the owner buys the apartment and rents it out, he does so with an expectation of profit based on the work of others.

That makes it a clear security, according to the smooth brains over at the SEC!

BOOM, just like that Gary Gensler became the owner of every single apartment thats put up for rent across USA. Its game over, everyone.

If you own a rented out apartment, you must immediately contact your local SEC field office to "come in and talk".

PS: Obviously, for those who dont pay attention to regulatory news, this is about Gensler/SEC claiming any token that has yield could potentially be a security..

EEdit 2: One of the misconceptions comes from misunderstanding how staking technically works, and confusing that with lending activity like Celsius/Blokcfi. When you "stake" into a network, you dont give anyone control or rights over your coins, you dont form an investment contract. When you deposit coins on a centralised entity like Celsius, that is not staking no matter what Celsius or others may call that. That is just lending - you give them control of your assets, they generate returns for you (or in Celsius' case - losses).

When you stake into a network, you actually run nodes, risk your assets for various lockup times, slashing penalties etc. There is no common enterprise - you are doing the work yourself by running validator nodes and producing blocks. There is an expectation of profit but not from the works of others. You are staking into a decentralized network, securing it and getting rewarded for your own activity.

For a legal analysis of this, see: https://www.coincenter.org/does-the-merge-change-how-ethereum-is-regulated-no/