The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) sent a Wells notice to Uniswap, a move that, in itself, is an alert that the agency is considering taking legal action against the decentralized cryptocurrency exchange. This is part of the scrutiny that the regulator maintains on the bitcoin (BTC) industry and other crypto assets.

The SEC typically sends companies a formal notice before litigation begins, giving the company a final opportunity to refute the allegations or prepare for the next step, such as a lawsuit or an agreement to avoid a trial.

In the case of Uniswap, everything seems to indicate that the team behind this decentralized finance (DeFi) platform will lean towards the legal battle , as it suggests so in a message published on X.

"Today Uniswap Labs received a Wells notice from the SEC and we are ready to fight. This is the latest political effort to target even the best cryptocurrency players like Uniswap and Coinbase. “All Uniswap products and the Uniswap protocol are not affected.”

Uniswap on X.

Uniswap Labs Chief Operating Officer Mary-Catherine Lader and Chief Legal Officer Marvin Ammori reported that the content of Wells' notice focuses on the company acting as an unregistered securities broker.

It is unclear whether the SEC considers the UNI token a security, however, Uniswap comes forward explaining on its official blog that "despite the SEC's rhetoric that most tokens are securities, the reality is that Tokens are a digital file format, such as a PDF or spreadsheet, and can store many types of value. They are not intrinsically values. The agency's recent lawsuits against cryptocurrency companies focus precisely on the fact that they illegally offer unregistered securities. High-profile companies such as Binance, Coinbase and Kraken are facing legal battles with the SEC after the regulator sued them for the same reasons already outlined.

Now the SEC's alert against Uniswap arises after an Appeals Court received a complaint from Coinbase, whose legal team maintains that the SEC seeks to impose “radical new authority” over the digital asset industry. And, furthermore, that this body “is pursuing this seizure of power through coercive actions.”

In fact, Coinbase has asked that the SEC lean towards working on specific regulation for the cryptocurrency industry instead of regulating through lawsuits and lengthy legal battles.