I have to think that such unawareness is at least partially willful. They are no doubt aware that the government regulates a lot of things and that financial services in particular have a lot of regulation. It didn’t occur to them that they might need to find out what applies to them?
At a small enough scale and not in government-heavy states all of those are legal to do without any sort of license. When you start doing it regularly is when you need licenses.
