Mars Finance news reported that the hedge fund giant Citadel Securities submitted a 13-page letter to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, suggesting that regulation of decentralized financial protocols handling tokenized securities should be strengthened. In response, the industry issued a joint letter on Friday, directly pointing out that its argument is 'baseless.' The letter addressed to the SEC, co-signed by the DeFi Education Fund, venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), the Digital Chamber of Commerce, Orca Creative, lawyer J.W. Verret, and the Uniswap Foundation, stated: 'While we agree with Citadel on the goals of investor protection, market order, and the integrity of the national market system, we oppose its view that achieving these goals always requires registration with traditional SEC intermediaries and that, in certain cases, cannot be accomplished through carefully designed on-chain markets.' Citadel Securities insists that DeFi protocols could operate as exchanges or brokers that need to be registered and regulated. However, the new SEC leadership under the Trump administration has been seeking to provide greater policy space for the crypto industry this year. White House crypto advisor Patrick Witte recently stated on social media platform X that his office supports 'the necessity of protecting software developers and DeFi.' 'As we outlined in the opinion letter, Citadel Securities strongly supports tokenization and other innovations that can solidify the U.S. digital finance leadership, but this should not come at the expense of strict investor protection - it is these protections that make the U.S. stock market the global gold standard,' a company spokesperson stated in an email declaration. The DeFi Alliance responded by pointing out that Citadel's letter contains 'multiple factual inaccuracies and misleading statements.' A spokesperson for the DeFi Education Fund, Jennifer Rosenthal, suggested that the agency is defending its own business interests: 'For Citadel, questioning the existence of a technology that threatens its business and significant market share is quite convenient.'

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