REGULATION

High-ranking officials join the fray! Former Dubai Financial Services Authority executive joins Binance, while Uniswap hires former Obama spokesperson, sparking controversy.

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High-ranking officials join the fray! Former Dubai Financial Services Authority executive joins Binance, while Uniswap hires former Obama spokesperson, sparking controversy.

Regulatory agencies are increasing their oversight in the cryptocurrency space, and both centralized and decentralized platforms are facing regulatory pressure to some extent. However, recently Uniswap and Binance, which have frequently appeared in regulatory news, have each adopted their own strategies to address this issue. Nevertheless, Uniswap's stance on decentralization has sparked debates.

Former Dubai Financial Services Authority Executive Joins Binance as Chief Regulatory Liaison Officer

Binance announced on 10/14 that Mark McGinness, former Director of International Relations at the Dubai Financial Services Authority (DFSA), has joined Binance as the Chief Regulatory Liaison Officer.

Binance noted that its international compliance team and advisory board have grown by over 500% since last year, with recent appointments including:

Prior to his role at the Dubai Financial Services Authority, Mark McGinness also served as Director of International Relations at the Australian Securities and Investments Commission, as well as a consultant for the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank.

Binance recently took actions such as delisting the C2C Renminbi trading zone on 12/31 and claimed to be conducting a review of Chinese users, which briefly caused Bitcoin to drop by nearly 5%.

Former Obama Spokesperson Joins Uniswap

Uniswap Labs has hired Hari Sevugan, a former senior spokesperson for U.S. President Obama during the 2008 presidential election, as their Chief Communications Officer (CCO).

According to a Uniswap spokesperson's statement, Hari Sevugan will lead conversations with the public, including helping the company describe Uniswap to existing users and new audiences, as well as managing media affairs.

Hari Sevugan has not been previously visible in the crypto community, but he has made positive remarks about blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies on Twitter and expressed his excitement about joining Uniswap.

DeFi + Regulation = CeFi?

In July of this year, Uniswap claimed that due to the evolving regulatory environment, they would limit access to specific tokens on the app.uniswap.org frontend, while emphasizing that the protocol itself still provides unrestricted access to everyone.

Subsequently, some in the community believe that despite Uniswap's decentralized governance symbolism, it is still controlled by the developer Uniswap Labs. With the hiring of the former Obama spokesperson, this topic has resurfaced, seen as a move towards regulatory compliance.

Bitcoin maximalist and Human Rights Foundation strategist Alex Gladstein retweeted the report, implying:

Decentralization in appearance.

Uniswap founder Hayden Adams responded:

Uniswap Labs assists in developing the protocol and building products on the protocol. Uniswap is based on Ethereum and immutable smart contracts. The "Uniswap frontend" is an open-source frontend built by developers and is not the primary source of traffic; there are still many other frontends available.

Chief Information Officer of BlockTower Capital, Ari Paul, also commented criticizing Alex Gladstein:

This is why Dr. Doom Rubini says Bitcoin is centralized, because Github and Blockstream are also centralized. Obviously, you realize that the control of the developer over Uniswap is the same as the control of the core developer over Bitcoin.

Research Director at The Block, Larry Cermak, believes there's nothing to argue about:

If Uniswap is forced to release v4 with mandatory KYC and other compliance measures, no one will use it. Users can easily switch to v2 or v3, with v3 having high capital efficiency and running well.