SEC has 'no real chance' in Grayscale appeal, spot BTC ETFs 'inevitable' - Banxa CLO Richard Mico

(Kitco News) - 2023 has seen a barrage of lawsuits and enforcement actions against cryptocurrency companies after the events of 2022, which included the collapse of FTX and Terra/Luna, highlighted the dire need to establish a regulatory framework for the rapidly growing asset class.

One decision that is likely to reverberate throughout the ecosystem for years to come was the dismissal of a class action lawsuit against Uniswap, the leading decentralized exchange (DEX) in the industry. The plaintiffs in the lawsuit accused the platform of alleged securities violations after they lost money due to “scam tokens” listed on the DEX between December 2020 and March 2022.

To get more insight into this case and what it means for crypto and the decentralized finance (DeFi) ecosystem, Kitco Crypto spoke with Richard Mico, the U.S. CEO and Chief Legal Officer of Banxa, a payment-and-compliance infrastructure provider for the global crypto industry.

“The full dismissal of the class-action suit against Uniswap Labs is yet another notable win for the broader crypto and DeFi ecosystem,” Mico said. “The class action lawsuit alleges harm after purchasing ‘scam tokens’ on the Uniswap platform. But notably, Judge Katherine Polk Failla in her decision noted that ‘Due to the Protocol’s decentralized nature… [there is] no identifiable defendant.’”