SEC Officially Sends Statement of Intent to Sue Uniswap

[TomPluz]

Uniswap founder Hayden Adams announced on Wednesday that the SEC had sent a Wells notice to Uniswap Labs, requesting compliance with law enforcement.

Hayden Adams, the founder of Uniswap, stated: “I’m not surprised. I just feel uncomfortable and disappointed, but we’re ready to face the challenge. I believe that the products we provide are legal and we are doing the right thing historically.”

Adams also expressed dissatisfaction with the SEC focusing on dealing with companies like Uniswap and Coinbase instead of addressing cases like FTX.

Information about law enforcement actions against Uniswap comes amid the SEC’s increasing focus on controlling cryptocurrency activities, especially with major companies like Coinbase, Ripple, and Binance.

Marvin Ammori, Legal Director of Uniswap Labs, described the SEC’s warning about law enforcement as “another abuse of power” and deemed the Wells notice “regrettable, but not surprising.” He also emphasized that Uniswap’s products comply with U.S. law and seek cooperation with reasonable regulations for cryptocurrencies, rather than continuing the abuse of power. Uniswap Labs is prepared to fight against this abuse and believes they will prevail.

Taken from this site here!

With the lawfare carried by SEC like a never-ending crusade supposedly to weed out scalawags from the cryptocurrency industry and to protect the people so they won't lose money, it is fighting many players whom it thinks can be doing things not accordance with the law of the land...and after many outfits as the receiving end of its power to regulate and prosecute, Uniswap is going to be added to its list.

1. Do you think this can hamper Uniswap in doing its business and will it affects its standing in the market?
2. Do you think SEC is just doing its job and is really doing things for the sake of protecting the small investors and users?
3. Which can be the next platform to experience the power of SEC and be facing possible charges?

[yhiaali3]

This is very expected, I was not at all surprised by the news because I knew it was a matter of time before warnings and accusations were leveled at all the big centralized and decentralized exchanges.

It is clear that the American attack began a long time ago on all central and decentralized third-party services, starting with Binance, and the list will inevitably go on. It would not be surprising at all to hear new accusations against one of the following exchanges every day.

Uniswap has grown so much that it is quite normal for it to be accused of money laundering, violating anti-terrorism laws, etc., the usual accusations.

[DabsPoorVersion]

This is not so surprising. News like this will always start to appear especially when the rally of the market starts to happen. We will see more news like this, and it will come one after another with related accusations just to bring down these large exchanges.

Let's see how the founder of Uniswap faces these accusations. If he is not surprised, then we might assume that he is prepared for this kind of battle.

[Charles-Tim]

Uniswap has grown so much that it is quite normal for it to be accused of money laundering, violating anti-terrorism laws, etc., the usual accusations.

I have read through the link and what the Uniswap founder tweeted but I still do not know the reason SEC wants to be in lawsuit with Uniswap. We do not know yet if it is money laundering and terrorism financing or not. It can be more of a way that SEC want the government to have more control. According to the news, SEC said they have been investigating Uniswap for years about how it is functioning without intermediary. Or is there something I still do no understand about the lawsuit?

[yhiaali3]

I have read through the link and what the Uniswap founder tweeted but I still do not know the reason SEC wants to be in lawsuit with Uniswap. We do not know yet if it is money laundering and terrorism financing or not. It can be more of a way that SEC want the government to have more control. According to the news, SEC said they have been investigating Uniswap for years about how it is functioning without intermediary. Or is there something I still do no understand about the lawsuit?

Indeed, as you mentioned, there are no clear charges yet. I guessed that the charges would be money laundering and violating anti-terrorism laws, as was usual in previous exchange charges.

But as I read in an article, Hayden Adams said:

“I am confident that the products we offer are legal and that our business is on the right side of history. But it has been clear for some time that instead of working to create clear and informed rules... The SEC decided to focus on attacking long-time good players like Uniswap and Coinbase. All while letting bad actors like FTX through.”

From what he said, it appears that the US government is questioning the legality of Uniswap products and has no clear accusations yet. I expect they want to pass the message that all centralized and decentralized exchanges are under the eyes of the government.

[SamReomo]

I think going against a platform like Uniswap wasn't a bad move by SEC because I believe such platforms allow rug-pullers to launch their tokens and rug-pull money from the investors and if some strict rules get implemented in such platforms then the amount of rug-pulls will reduce overtime.

I know that SEC has been so aggressively targeting crypto currencies and crypto platforms but if this time they have taken this step to reduce the rug-pulls then that's a good one in my eyes. I'm sure that after Uniswap, they will start suing other such platforms.

[ABCbits]

So now SEC is also after non-centralized service (at least not as centralized as CEX), which isn't surprising at this point. It seems SEC trying to imitate how other government agency attacking Tornado Cash by suing the developer instead.

[Zed0X]

So now SEC is also after non-centralized service (at least not as centralized as CEX), which isn't surprising at this point.

This is not the first, remember Etherdelta? You've probably heard of it but just in case, it's one of the pioneer non-custodial exchanges. I think the founder abandoned it after the lawsuit.

The Uniswap case is going to be interesting. I doubt they would win the case against SEC and they will be unmasked as not a 100% DEX. Many of the old users are aware of that already but the new users might be disappointed if they found out.

[electronicash]

So now SEC is also after non-centralized service (at least not as centralized as CEX), which isn't surprising at this point.

This is not the first, remember Etherdelta? You've probably heard of it but just in case, it's one of the pioneer non-custodial exchanges. I think the founder abandoned it after the lawsuit.

The Uniswap case is going to be interesting. I doubt they would win the case against SEC and they will be unmasked as not a 100% DEX. Many of the old users are aware of that already but the new users might be disappointed if they found out.

if the CEOs are just unknown and the website host is offshore i think the SEC will have no way of reaching out someone that is unknown and so they will not be able to sue the CEO nor the owner.

i remember that etherdelta i have used it once in the past but another forkdelta arrived and then again it was abandoned. SEC may have something to do with it as well.
a website with .onion i think will not be reached by the extended hands of SEC.

[Baofeng]

1. Do you think this can hamper Uniswap in doing its business and will it affects its standing in the market?
2. Do you think SEC is just doing its job and is really doing things for the sake of protecting the small investors and users?
3. Which can be the next platform to experience the power of SEC and be facing possible charges?

1. If there will be an effect, it could be just short term though. Uniswap has gain some market already and with the incoming bull-run, I think that there are still crypto users that are going to used their platform, regardless of the intent to sue by SEC
2. Well they have been hot on the tail of crypto projects, and so "they" think they are doing their job correctly. But for us, this is like witch hunting.
3. Not sure what will be the next platform, but whatever the head of SEC or maybe they are being pressured by some groups to come after a big projects, so I will not be surprised if they target exchanges or project in the top 10.

[ABCbits]

So now SEC is also after non-centralized service (at least not as centralized as CEX), which isn't surprising at this point.

This is not the first, remember Etherdelta? You've probably heard of it but just in case, it's one of the pioneer non-custodial exchanges. I think the founder abandoned it after the lawsuit.

The Uniswap case is going to be interesting. I doubt they would win the case against SEC and they will be unmasked as not a 100% DEX. Many of the old users are aware of that already but the new users might be disappointed if they found out.

Thanks for the reminder, i totally forget that. But unlike Etherdelta case, Uniswap is more popular and Uniswap Labs have decent funding and should able to hire decent lawyer/legal team. So there should be possibility they can repel SEC's sue attempt.

[hugeblack]

There is something that they may not have noticed, but I think what happened will make any privacy-focused open source software developer skeptical, as he will eventually face judicial charges for running an unregistered securities service, or worse, money laundering charges. So perhaps the next step will be wallet developers, which will make all future projects developed anonymously.

[Freemind]

Centralized exchanges, privacy coins, and now decentralized exchanges... I'm actually not surprised by what the SEC is doing as it is very predictable. They continue to think that they are the police of the world, and that with the excuse of caring about user investments, which is too simple a lie, they try to control crypto activity. Among other things, the only thing they are looking for, in my opinion, is to force the use of centralized exchanges, which would be a great success for them, since on the other hand they are forcing centralized exchanges to launch stricter policies regarding KYC.

As I have been saying for years, everything is focused on greater and better control of citizens and their funds. By fully controlling the citizen and their funds, governments will be able to know at all times what they do, where they go, where they spend...

[Zed0X]

So now SEC is also after non-centralized service (at least not as centralized as CEX), which isn't surprising at this point.

This is not the first, remember Etherdelta? You've probably heard of it but just in case, it's one of the pioneer non-custodial exchanges. I think the founder abandoned it after the lawsuit.

The Uniswap case is going to be interesting. I doubt they would win the case against SEC and they will be unmasked as not a 100% DEX. Many of the old users are aware of that already but the new users might be disappointed if they found out.

Thanks for the reminder, i totally forget that. But unlike Etherdelta case, Uniswap is more popular and Uniswap Labs have decent funding and should able to hire decent lawyer/legal team. So there should be possibility they can repel SEC's sue attempt.

Their lawyers and funding can drag this out but I still think it's going to be a waste of money. Best scenario for them is probably to agree to a settlement deal. Even if we don't know all the details, it's impossible that Uniswap never allowed US citizens to use their platform but, yeah, it's up to the SEC to prove that.

~
if the CEOs are just unknown and the website host is offshore i think the SEC will have no way of reaching out someone that is unknown and so they will not be able to sue the CEO nor the owner.

That's true but if the exchange is big enough and if authorities thinks it violated anti-money laundering and anti-terrorism financing, who knows what they'll do to get them.

[Z-tight]

2. Do you think SEC is just doing its job and is really doing things for the sake of protecting the small investors and users?

It is hard to say, i know many of these services are into shady things, and some of them willfully break AML laws and other regulatory requirements, a lot of them also operate without acquiring the necessary license to operate. However, at some point i think the SEC and the U.S government are simply after crypto services and crypto privacy solutions, it is kind of looking like witch-hunting now.