After crypto lending platform Celsius froze customer withdrawals earlier this week amid heightened market volatility, decentralized exchanges like Uniswap Protocol could be faced with increased regulatory scrutiny. Since Uniswap is decentralized, it's "exempt from the regulatory oversight that centralized exchanges receive," Bank of America analyst Alkesh Shah wrote in a note Tuesday. Uniswap, an automated market maker that facilitates token swapping by replacing order books with liquidity pools, "may be required to register with the SEC as a National Securities Exchange or broker-dealer," Shah noted, adding that the securities agency in February proposed changes to the Exchange Act that would broaden the definition of an exchange in a move that was "likely intended to bring decentralized exchanges into its framework." Furthermore, "if Uniswap is required to register as a broker-dealer, like Coinbase (NASDAQ:COIN), it would be obligated to provide disclosures, including specific risks, for each of the thousands of tokens
