Uniswap, one of many world’s largest distributed exchanges (DEXs), will be akin to conventional monetary establishments if regulatory situations are totally different.
That is the view of Matt Hougan, Chief Funding Officer of Bitwise Asset Administration, who argued that Uniswap’s present $6 billion market capitalization underestimates its true worth.
I really feel that the $6 billion Uniswap is simply too small. If it had been the corporate, it will be the four-hundredth largest monetary providers enterprise on this planet and is roughly the identical measurement as StoreBrand, Norway’s financial savings and insurance coverage enterprise.
– Matt Hougan (@matt_hougan) August 4, 2025
In a sequence of posts on X (previously Twitter), Hougan in contrast Uniswap scores to StoreBrand, a mid-sized Norwegian insurance coverage firm ranked round four-hundredth amongst world monetary providers corporations.
“I really feel that the $6 billion Uniswap is simply too small,” Hougan writes. “If it had been an organization, it will be the four-hundredth largest monetary providers enterprise on this planet.”
Nonetheless, the analogy rapidly attracted criticism from business watchers who identified that Uniswap’s native governance token $uni doesn’t characterize truthful or possession and doesn’t present a share of protocol income to token holders.
Bitwise CIO compares Uniswap Dex with conventional monetary valuations
Cicada Companions accomplice Tom Lombardi responded by drawing sharp boundaries between token worth and company fairness. “I am excited by discussing company valuations for Uniswap Lab,” he writes.
Hougan admitted the excellence, however added that pictures may change as extra favorable rules enter the area. “Yeah, that is a good level,” he replied. “As talked about earlier than, the fascinating premise is that regulatory reduction permits for a reset of toconomics.”
That theme, regulatory reform as an evaluation, was re-emphasized in Hougan’s response to a different X person. He identified that $Uni tokens at present don’t present intrinsic worth to holders.
“Uniswap tokens usually are not current worth,” the person wrote. “It seems that the muse has not but addressed income issues when setting excessive lipids as commonplace. Presently, UNI doesn’t present intrinsic worth to group holders aside from the enjoyment of pink items at DAO token-funded crypto occasions.”
Hougan mentioned, “I believe the rationale for that is regulatory uncertainty. As SEC’s new “Undertaking Crypto” begins to peel away that uncertainty, I’m wondering if that is true. ”
Ready for “Undertaking Crypto” to achieve actual worth from UNISWAP
Regardless of the non-work construction, UniSwap is scaled to competing factors in a number of central exchanges and volumes. Uniswap’s market capitalization is over $6.1 billion, in response to Coinmarketcap.
Nonetheless, as Lombardi and Colby level out, Uniswap’s present construction nonetheless doesn’t justify its optimism. The underlying protocol has not but proposed a mechanism to hyperlink token possession to monetary pursuits, actively working to developer grants and ecosystem progress. Such a transfer may set off scrutiny of the SEC.
The outlook for readability of rules stays an essential wildcard. Final month, the Securities and Trade Fee unveiled Undertaking Crypto, an initiative designed to modernize brokers’ approaches to digital belongings.
If regulatory reduction permits a decentralized protocol to distribute income or revenues to token holders, like $uni, governance tokens like $uni start to resemble true equity, identical to dividends.
Till then, UNISWAP has been one of the crucial profitable DEXs per quantity, each a protocol by which flagship tokens don’t present authorized claims to money flows.
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