Naturally the price tanked on the news:
Here's the exact wording of what he said:
His reasoning seems to be that because developers are actively working on it, it's a security. (Presumably the reason Doge is not a security is because the founders abandoned it as a joke and no new development has been done since 2013, it just runs on auto-pilot).
This is going to have to be tested in court. He's relying on an obscure 1938 law, and just making up caveats by himself, in the absence of Congress passing specific crypto legislation.
In the meanwhile, I can see crypto businesses fleeing the US because of the uncertainty.
Even if the US bans Ethereum, it's not the end of the world.
Old hands will remember 2017/18 when China was going through a similar process. Practically every week there was a "China is banning bitcoin" story, as they targetted one exchange after another just as the SEC is doing.
Each time the bitcoin price would dive, as people reasoned, "how can it survive if it's blocked from such a big market?". It took China five years, but they managed to close down every single exchange and mining rig.
Yet bitcoin and other crypto didn't die, they are way higher in price than in 2017/18. Because China was not the world. The USA is not the world either, so it doesn't matter if they ban it.
Finally, though there are no exchanges in China, crypto is still traded. It's just gone underground. People do person-to-person trades. Or they make a quick trip to Macau or Singapore and meet an agent who buys on their behalf and they come home with their wallet.dat safe on a USB stick, or create a paper wallet with the keys.
I expect Americans will do the same, there'll be holidays in the Caymans or British Virgin Islands, with some busines done on the side. (Britain and all it's financial "crown-dependency" islands across the world will never ban crypto, the City of London and it's spider-web of off-shore centres have been in the money business for 500 years, and are looking forward to the next 500 years).