Uniswap (UNI) is fighting back against the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
The largest decentralized exchange by trading volume received a Wells Notice from the SEC last month, indicating that the regulator plans to take enforcement action against the DEX soon.
Marvin Ammori, chief legal officer at Uniswap Labs, notes that the project filed an official response with the SEC on Tuesday.
Ammori argues that the SEC is relying on the false assumption that almost all crypto assets are securities.
“But a token is just a file format, such as a PDF or JPEG. Tokens can represent any value, and predominantly represent commodities (BTC, ETH, stables) and memes and access to useful networks. PDFs are not necessarily stock certificates, and tokens are not necessarily securities.
Even when it comes to securities, the Uniswap protocol (and the web app and the wallet) do not fall under the definitions of the ‘stock exchange’ or ‘broker’.
By law, the Uniswap protocol should be specifically designed ‘for’ ‘securities’ – and that is not the case. It is general purpose, mainly used for raw materials.”
Ammori also says that current US law requires stock exchanges to be run by “groups.” The Chief Legal Officer notes that Uniswap is “self-contained software” and is not managed or controlled by anyone.
“Our case is so strong that the SEC is trying to change the law to fight us. The SEC is preparing a rulemaking that proposes to rewrite its own definition of “exchange” – and to redefine “group” and several other words beyond what they actually mean. Changing the meaning of words to sue us under the new made-up law is simply not going to work in court.”
The SEC has also accused Coinbase, Binance and Kraken of violating securities laws and filed lawsuits against all three exchanges last year.
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Generated image: Midjourney