While Securities & Exchange Commission Chair Gary Gensler has called for crypto exchanges to register with the agency, Coinbase (COIN), the largest U.S. crypto exchange, told Yahoo Finance in their view there is no path to registering with the agency.

"We've tried, and there's just no way to do it," Coinbase chief policy officer Faryar Shirzad told Yahoo Finance in an interview. "In fact, we submitted a petition with the SEC back in June, where we enumerated the specific issues that the agency would have to resolve for crypto platforms to be able to come in and register."

Shirzad says despite filing a list of questions asking how to register with the Commission, the SEC hasn't responded to its inquiries.

SEC Chair Gensler told Yahoo Finance back in December his goal for regulating the cryptocurrency space was to bring, "these platforms, the exchanges, the lending platforms...[into] compliance."

"They can do that appropriately working with the SEC, or we can continue on the course with more enforcement actions," Gensler said at the time. "And I would have to say that the runway is getting shorter."

Asked whether the SEC had engaged with crypto firms on this process, Gensler said: "It really is on these entrepreneurs and business leaders in the crypto space."

In Shirzad's view, however, the SEC's talk is not matched with clarity offered to the leaders in the space referenced by Gensler last year.

"When we ask specific questions: How do we get to a path to registration? There's never an answer," Shirzad said.

"We think the opportunity to build a crypto securities market in the United States is enormously exciting, but we've stayed away from it because there's no path to registration, and there's just no way to do it."

A security-free platform

Asked about the perpetual question on how tokens are categorized, Shirzad maintains Coinbase doesn't trade securities on its platform.

"We have about 200-plus assets that we list on our exchange. We review every asset before we list it to make sure, among other things, that it's not a fraud, that it's cyber resilient, but importantly, we look to see whether [it has the] potential to be treated as a security,” Shirzad said. "If it is, we don't list it."

In an amicus brief filed Monday as part of a case against a former employee facing allegations by the SEC of insider trading and securities fraud for leaking information about new token listings on Coinbase, the crypto exchange said the digital assets Coinbase lists are not securities.