by Cynthia Ezirim 
As soon as news of the Wells notice emerged, UNI fell sharply, losing 17% of its value.
Large holders of UNI, the native token of the largest decentralized exchange Uniswap, have dumped millions of the asset after the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) served Uniswap Labs a Wells notice.
According to a tweet by Lookonchain, the whales have offloaded $20 million worth of UNI, dragging the asset’s price further.
The SEC’s Wells Notice
On April 20, Uniswap Labs revealed it had received a Wells notice from the U.S. SEC, informing the team of the agency’s plans to take legal action. The blockchain developer behind Uniswap said the notice was the SEC’s latest political effort to target even the best actors in the web3 space.
Uniswap Labs insisted that the SEC’s claims that most tokens, including UNI, were securities are baseless as cryptocurrencies traded on secondary markets, like the decentralized exchange, are not investment contracts. Moreover, the U.S. agency had failed to create a path for businesses to register tokens that may represent securities.
The blockchain software company argued that Congress had not authorized the SEC to regulate assets that do not constitute investment contracts.
“We do this work because we believe blockchains can offer consumers more choice and control over what they own, in the United States and around the world. We think that this is worth fighting for. We’re disappointed that we may have to fight a U.S. government agency to protect innovation and economic freedom,” Uniswap Labs stated.
Whales Offload $20M UNI
As soon as news of the Wells notice emerged, UNI fell sharply, losing 17% of its value. On-chain data shows the token plunged further as it has lost over 20% of its value in the past 24 hours and was trading at $8.98 by the time of writing.
Reacting to the news and the fall of UNI, large wallets began to offload their holdings. Addresses identified as 0x2F8b and 0x3555 deposited the 1.25 million UNI worth $11.7 million to Binance, while 0x4A0B sold 472,691 UNI for 4.59 million Circle (USDC).
In addition, six other wallets collectively deposited 316,430 UNI worth $3.16M to Binance. While the first pair of wallets look to make approximately $3.5 million from their UNI sale, 0x4A0B already realized $1.67 million in profits from their move.
