Crypto organizations join forces to counter Citadel, criticizing its tokenization regulatory proposals as "flawed"

Jinse Finance reported that several DeFi and crypto organizations—including DeFi Education Fund, a16z, The Digital Chamber, and Uniswap Foundation—jointly sent a letter to the SEC, criticizing Citadel Securities for its request last week that the SEC strictly define “all intermediaries in tokenized US stock trading.” They stated that Citadel’s analysis is “flawed” and misrepresents the facts. The crypto industry pointed out that Citadel is attempting to extend SEC registration requirements to any entity “even slightly involved” in DeFi transactions, incorrectly treating decentralized protocols as traditional “exchanges or brokers.” They emphasized that DeFi operates through autonomous software and lacks actual asset-custody intermediaries, and therefore should not be subject to the same regulatory framework. Citadel responded by stating that it supports asset tokenization, but not at the expense of investor protections that have been built up over the long term in the US capital markets. As a result, tensions between the two sides have further escalated. The US SEC has recently continued to signal support for both innovation and compliance, and on Friday issued a no-action letter to DTC, allowing it to provide tokenization services for custodial assets including Russell 1000 constituents, major US stock index ETFs, and US Treasuries.