Yesterday, Uniswap, the world’s largest decentralized exchange platform, announced through its blog that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission served them with a Wells notice indicating a possible lawsuit. This not-so-shocking news comes when the SEC is still in wrangles with Coinbase, the US’s largest centralized exchange, and Ripple, among other crypto and blockchain companies.
Following the announcement, notable individuals within the crypto community have come out to voice their opinions on the SEC and their motives. Uniswap took to their blog to explain the contents of the Wells notice, indicating that the SEC did not provide any material detail as to why they would go after Uniswap.
“We are confident that the products we offer are not just legal – they are transformative. They empower people across the world by enabling transparent, verifiable markets with fewer gatekeepers, which allows for cheap, accessible, global economic participation.” Uniswap says.
According to Uniswap, the SEC is following through with their incessant rhetoric that most crypto tokens are securities. Uniwap argues that tokens are just a digital file format like any other and can store different values.
Here’s an interesting analogy by Uniswap.
“Despite SEC rhetoric that “most” tokens are securities, the reality is that tokens are a digital file format, like a pdf or spreadsheet, and can store many kinds of value. They are not intrinsically securities, just as every sheet of paper is not a stock certificate”
The SEC is relentlessly fighting innovation and transparency by attacking blockchain companies that champion innovation within the space. According to Uniswap, the SEC should embrace new developments within the space in order to allow Americans and the US at large to remain competitive in the industry.
CoinBureau’s CEO and Co-founder remarks on the SEC vs Uniswap
“The only investors that the SEC is “protecting” by going after Uniswap are the investors who own stocks in US banks.
Decentralized competition against the TradFi monopoly isn’t good for their share prices.”
- Nic, CoinBureau CEO and Co-Founder
This tweet certainly summarizes the vast majority of expert opinions from the crypto community. The crypto community often feels targeted by the SEC, as most of their attempts to regulate the market go against the fundamentals of blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies as a whole.
In fact, as Nic mentions, it appears that the only investors the SEC is striving to protect are Tradition Finance TradFi investors who have their investments backing shares and stocks of banking institutions and are heavily dependent on the centralized banking system.
While we continue to monitor the developments between Uniswap and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, it will be interesting to see how the SEC approaches this legal pursuit of a decentralized finance (DeFi) platform.
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