Uniswap, one of the world’s largest distributed exchanges (DEXs), can be comparable to traditional financial institutions if regulatory conditions are different.
This is the view of Matt Hougan, Chief Investment Officer of Bitwise Asset Management, who argued that Uniswap’s current $6 billion market capitalization underestimates its true value.
I feel that the $6 billion Uniswap is too small. If it were the company, it would be the 400th largest financial services business in the world and is roughly the same size as StoreBrand, Norway’s savings and insurance business.
– Matt Hougan (@matt_hougan) August 4, 2025
In a series of posts on X (formerly Twitter), Hougan compared Uniswap ratings to StoreBrand, a mid-sized Norwegian insurance company ranked around 400th among global financial services companies.
“I feel that the $6 billion Uniswap is too small,” Hougan writes. “If it were a company, it would be the 400th largest financial services business in the world.”
However, the analogy quickly attracted criticism from industry watchers who pointed out that Uniswap’s native governance token $uni does not represent fair or ownership and does not provide a share of protocol revenue to token holders.
Bitwise CIO compares Uniswap Dex with traditional financial valuations
Cicada Partners partner Tom Lombardi responded by drawing sharp boundaries between token value and corporate equity. “I’m interested in discussing corporate valuations for Uniswap Lab,” he writes.
Hougan admitted the distinction, but added that photos could change as more favorable regulations enter the space. “Yeah, that’s a fair point,” he replied. “As mentioned before, the interesting premise is that regulatory relief allows for a reset of toconomics.”
That theme, regulatory reform as an assessment, was re-emphasized in Hougan’s response to another X user. He pointed out that $Uni tokens currently do not provide intrinsic value to holders.
“Uniswap tokens are not present value,” the user wrote. “It appears that the foundation has not yet addressed revenue concerns when setting high lipids as standard. Currently, UNI does not provide intrinsic value to community holders other than the joy of pink goods at DAO token-funded crypto events.”
Hougan said, “I think the reason for this is regulatory uncertainty. As SEC’s new “Project Crypto” begins to peel away that uncertainty, I wonder if this is true. ”
Waiting for “Project Crypto” to gain real value from UNISWAP
Despite the non-work structure, UniSwap is scaled to competing points in several central exchanges and volumes. Uniswap’s market capitalization is over $6.1 billion, according to Coinmarketcap.
Still, as Lombardi and Colby point out, Uniswap’s current structure still does not justify its optimism. The underlying protocol has not yet proposed a mechanism to link token ownership to financial interests, actively working to developer grants and ecosystem growth. Such a move could trigger scrutiny of the SEC.
The outlook for clarity of regulations remains an important wildcard. Last month, the Securities and Exchange Commission unveiled Project Crypto, an initiative designed to modernize agents’ approaches to digital assets.
If regulatory relief allows a decentralized protocol to distribute profits or revenues to token holders, like $uni, governance tokens like $uni begin to resemble true fairness, just like dividends.
Until then, UNISWAP has been one of the most successful DEXs per volume, both a protocol in which flagship tokens do not provide legal claims to cash flows.
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