Aave, Uniswap, Sky Tokens Surge Over 20% as SEC Roundtable Spurs DeFi Optimism

Decentralized finance (DeFi) tokens UNI, AAVE and SKY all rose by more than 20% on optimistic comments from SEC Chair Paul Atkins at a Monday roundtable discussion about the sector.

Atkins instructed the regulator to explore exemptions to let decentralized finance (DeFi) firms conduct operations without as many restrictions.

"The right to have self-custody of one's private property is a foundational American value," he said.

The comments are a stark contrast to those made by the previous commission led by Gary Gensler, which was criticized for stifling innovation by imposing restrictive guidance on crypto firms.

"Can you imagine a starker contrast with the previous SEC’s approach?," said Noelle Acheson, analyst and author of Crypto Is Macro Now newsletter.

"We expected Atkins to say some nice words around the potential for innovation to unleash new financial efficiencies," she wrote. "We didn’t expect his support to be quite so emphatic."

Industry members heralded the event as a symbolic milestone the event ,

June 9th "will be remembered as DeFi day," Changpeng "CZ" Zhao, founder of Binance, the largest crypto exchange by trading volume posted on X.

"The DeFi Renaissance continues," said Arthur Cheong, founder and CEO of crypto investment firm DeFiance Capital.

DeFi-related tokens well outperformed an already upbeat crypto market with bitcoin BTC bouncing to near record prices. Ethereum's ether ETH, a key hub for DeFi applications, also jumped over 8%.

The broad-market crypto benchmark CoinDesk 20 Index was 4.7% up over the past 24 hours, while BTC gained 1.5% in the same period.

Read more: U.S. SEC Chair Says Working on 'Innovation Exemption' for DeFi Platforms