Our Collective Response to Citadel Securities

On December 12, 2025, Citadel Securities (“Citadel”) submitted a letter to the SEC regarding “Tokenized U.S. Equity Securities & DeFi Trading Protocols.” In this letter, Citadel baselessly encourages the SEC to regulate DeFi technologies and developers as traditional SEC-registered “intermediaries,” notably with many incorrect citations and misrepresentations about DeFi technology. 

In response, those of us (mis)cited in the Citadel letter – including DeFi Education Fund, a16z, The Digital Chamber, Orca Creative, J.W. Verret, and Uniswap Foundation – wrote and submitted a response to the SEC correcting the record. 

In our letter, we provide accurate technical information about DeFi and correct several factual mischaracterizations and misleading statements. For the avoidance of doubt, we also included a table contrasting the claims made in the Citadel Letter with our actual positions and prior statements.  

You can read the letter in full here.

If you’re looking to learn more about DeFi, please visit our Knowledge Base to explore DEF’s educational resources: https://www.defieducationfund.org/docs/educational/