The Czech National Bank just made it official. They’ve allocated $1 million to test out “bitcoin and stablecoins” as part of a small experimental portfolio. Governor Aleš Michl had already hinted at it in January, now the pilot is live.

It will run for two to three years, with the CNB promising to “inform the public on an ongoing basis” on the lessons learnt. While this pilot feels a bit like the central bank picking up its first lottery ticket (“but for research purposes only”), it’s certainly a milestone worth noting.

Central banks sit at the Mount Rushmore level of institutions, and this learning-by-doing approach will likely surprise the involved central bankers to the upside. Just remember: no crying in the casino.

Today, we’ll also talk about:

• Uniswap Labs aims to activate the “fee switch” and end misalignment

• SEC Chairman Atkins talks token taxonomy

Uniswap Labs Aims to Activate the “Fee Switch” and Overhaul Protocol Economics

Flip the switch: On Monday, Uniswap Labs and Uniswap Foundation unveiled plans for a major overhaul of the token economics of the leading decentralized spot exchange. By activating the long-discussed “fee switch,” Uniswap would capture a share of trading fees for the first time and use them for buybacks and burns of the UNI token, directly redirecting economic value to tokenholders. UNI spiked roughly 55% on the announcement before giving back about 23% in the days since.

• Why it matters: Uniswap’s move fits into a broader trend across DeFi, where protocols like Hyperliquid, Aave, Sky, and Jupiter are turning on fee-capture mechanisms and using buybacks to let tokenholders participate in real economic upside. At the same time, Uniswap is trying to fix a deeper structural issue: the long-standing misalignment between equity holders, who historically captured most of the business value, and UNI tokenholders, who carried governance rights without sharing in returns.

New regime, new hope: Although Uniswap has seen similar proposals in the past, this version is widely seen as the first with a real chance of passing. The shift comes as the SEC adopts a more constructive posture on token economics — a notable change from earlier years, when stakeholders feared that directing fees to UNI could trigger securities-classification risks. Those concerns peaked after Uniswap Labs received a Wells Notice in April 2024 alleging it operated an unregistered securities exchange.

• "This restriction was in great part due to a hostile regulatory environment that cost thousands of hours and tens of millions in legal fees. Fortunately, the regulatory environment has shifted," Uniswap founder and CEO Hayden Adams wrote in his post.

The specifics: With that regulatory tailwind, Adams is proposing a full redesign of how UNI captures value:

• Protocol fees: Activate the fee switch and take a 1/6 to 1/4 cut of swap fees that currently go entirely to liquidity providers — with the captured portion redirected to a UNI buyback and burn program.

• Unichain fees: Redirect all net fees generated by Uniswap’s Layer 2 to the UNI buyback (around $6 million annualized).

• Retroactive burn: Burn 100 million UNI from the treasury, reflecting an estimate of what would have been burned if protocol fees had been active since the token launched.

Stronger alignment: In parallel, Uniswap Labs will stop collecting revenue from its frontend, wallet, and API, which have generated $179 million since late 2023. Instead, the team is requesting an annual 20 million UNI growth budget, shifting economic alignment away from equity holders and toward the protocol’s tokenholders.

What’s next: UNI tokenholders have until next Monday to comment on the proposal. If no changes are required and the community approves it, the upgrade is expected to go live in roughly 19 days.

U.S. Regulatory Update: SEC Chair talks “Token Taxonomy,” Discussion on CLARITY Act Moves Forward

Crypto regulation: After several quiet weeks in Washington due to the now-ended government shutdown, U.S. policymakers returned with meaningful movement on two pillars of upcoming digital-asset regulation: the SEC’s administrative initiative, “Project Crypto,” and Congress’s legislative framework, the CLARITY Act.

• Why it matters: Taken together, these efforts point toward the same objective: establishing long-delayed legal clarity by defining what counts as a digital commodity versus a security and dividing supervisory authority between the SEC and CFTC. If successful, they would create the most coherent U.S. market structure for crypto to date and form the foundation for compliant, onshore innovation.

Inside Project Crypto: On Wednesday, SEC Chairman Paul Atkins delivered a speech at the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia and provided more detailed insights into the agency’s progress on establishing a token taxonomy, starting with his current thinking on which categories of crypto assets constitute a security and which do not:

• "Digital commodities, or network tokens, digital collectibles, [and] digital tools such as a membership, ticket, or identity badge, are, in my opinion, not securities. […] Tokenized securities are and will continue to be securities."

Expiring investment contracts: Perhaps even more importantly, he elaborated on the changing nature of investment contracts in the case of crypto, for the first time explicitly making the case that a token born as part of a securities offering does not remain a security indefinitely:

• "Networks mature. Code is shipped. Control disperses. The issuer’s role diminishes or disappears. At some point, purchasers are no longer relying on the issuer’s essential managerial efforts, and most tokens now trade without any reasonable expectation that a particular team is still at the helm. In short, a token is no more a security because it was once part of an investment contract transaction than a golf course is a security because it used to be part of a citrus grove investment scheme."

Progress on CLARITY: Meanwhile, the Senate Agriculture Committee released its long-awaited market-structure discussion draft, a prerequisite for advancing the CLARITY Act. The draft must eventually be merged with the Senate Banking Committee’s version before reaching the full Senate, but its publication signals that negotiations — repeatedly delayed over the summer — are now moving again.

Unclarity on DeFi? Drawing heavily from the U.S. House's version of CLARITY, the draft lays out the definition of a digital commodity and adds stronger provisions for user protection, CFTC supervision, and self-custody. Yet large parts of the blockchain-specific text remain in brackets, and the sections on DeFi and anti-money-laundering were left blank.

In the waiting room: One explanation, according to people close to the process, is that the Agriculture Committee is waiting for the Banking Committee, which has jurisdiction over financial-institution rules, to set clearer guardrails for DeFi, node operators, wallet providers, and developers.

• “We are hoping that the section left open for DeFi will be filled in with robust developer protections that clearly distinguish centralized intermediaries from software developers without custody and control of other people’s money,” said Amanda Tuminelli, Executive Director of the DeFi Education Fund.

This week, we released the European Banks & Stablecoin Report. It’s a collection of eight in-depth interviews with leading European banks on their stablecoin strategies.

Learn how institutions like Société Générale, BBVA, ING, and DZ Bank are approaching stablecoins, and dive deep into the case study between Morpho and SG-Forge.

→ Download the Report.