Earlier this week, the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) deemed the HEX token an unregistered security.
As a result, Uniswap, the largest decentralized exchange protocol in the world, removed the token from its interface.
Uniswap blocks tokens
The HEX token now appears on the “unsupported” tokens list with a note stating that Uniswap blocks tokens that violate trademarks, have been proven to be scams, or have legal considerations.
However, even though tokens are removed from the interface, they can still be traded via the decentralized protocol.
Delisting only occurs at the front-end level, which means that all wallets on alternative-hosted websites can still trade delisted tokens. Alternatively, users can interact directly with the protocol’s smart contract to trade these tokens.
This week, the SEC announced that it had deemed HEX an unregistered security in its lawsuit against Richard Schueler (also known as Richard Heart) and his projects, HEX, PulseChain, and PulseX.
The lawsuit alleges that Schueler raised more than $1 billion across three unregistered securities offerings starting in 2019 and also deceived investors by using their money for personal expenses.
According to the SEC lawsuit filed on Monday, the PLS and PLSX tokens are still operating but are not currently available on Uniswap.
The SEC cited Uniswap in the lawsuit to explain why they opted to file the case in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York.
According to the SEC, a significant number of the transactions mentioned in the lawsuit occurred on Uniswap, which has its developers based in Brooklyn.
“Venue is proper in this District because many of the crypto asset transactions described herein took place on Uniswap, a so-called decentralized crypto asset trading platform whose developers are headquartered in Brooklyn. Heart specifically designed PulseX as a fork of Uniswap,” the SEC said in the complaint.
“Additionally, at least one investor of PulseChain and PulseX resides in this District.”
