Citadel, an investment management company, has asked the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to regulate decentralized finance (DeFi), the same way it does traditional finance (TradFi). Naturally, this has caused backlash in the crypto community since the whole premise of DeFi is to be “other than” the traditional financial archetype, which is central in nature.
Hayden Adams, CEO of Uniswap, a decentralized crypto exchange, minced no words in his accusations as he waded into Citadel.
In an article shared on He also claimed that Citadel “has been lobbying behind closed doors on this topic for years.”
Additionally, Adams had a problem with Citadel’s assertion that DeFi cannot provide fair access to markets. In his post, he claimed that Citadel was the king of shady online market makers and that it had a problem with fintechs that can lower the barriers to creating liquidity.
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This all happened when Citadel sent a letter to the SEC on December 2, 2025, regarding tokenized stocks and DeFi trading, in which it claimed that DeFi platforms connect buyers and sellers in a way that meets the legal definition of an exchange or broker-dealer.
The market maker argued that DeFi should not receive any special treatment simply because it runs on blockchains. Furthermore, the letter suggested to the SEC that players in the DeFi ecosystem, including trading app operators, smart contract developers, validators, and liquidity providers, should be strictly regulated.
Citedal noted that many of these ecosystem players charge fees and often influence how transactions are routed, similar to how intermediaries operate in TradFi. The market maker called on the SEC to take a technology-agnostic approach to DeFi, meaning the same rules will apply regardless of the technology or system used.
Additionally, in its letter, Citadel likened tokenized stocks to a shadow stock market outside the official U.S. banking system, which could split liquidity and circumvent already existing protections for investors.
If Citadel wins, developers, front-end operators, wallets, market makers, and even DAO participants could be subject to the same strict rules as brokers.
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Crypto groups and prominent crypto figures have already begun to push back, arguing that open source protocols and validator networks are nothing like Wall Street intermediaries and should not have to register.
