- Primary account balances would be credited with rewards in addition to the principal.
- Recent legal precedents in the United States may have had a role in the outcome.
Bitstamp, a cryptocurrency exchange, has decided to end its staking services for users in the U.S. The exchange takes a 15% cut of staked rewards, as stated on their website. Staking ETH on the exchange yields a monthly payout of 4.50%, while staking Algorand yields a monthly return of 1.60%. Along with Canada, Japan, Singapore, and the UK, the United States is now one of the nations where Bitstamp staking services are unavailable.
The exchange stated:
“Customers will continue earning staking rewards up until September 25, 2023, and after that, all staked assets will be unstaked. Rewards, along with the principal, will be credited to users’ main Bitstamp account balances.”
Recent Regulatory Effects
Bitstamp’s U.S. CEO and global chief commercial officer, Bobby Zagotta, has said that customers’ primary Bitstamp account balances would be credited with rewards in addition to the principal, however he has cautioned that it may take a few days for users’ balances to reflect the changes.
Recent legal precedents in the United States may have had a role in the outcome. Bitstamp said in early August that they will be withdrawing support for at least seven other cryptocurrencies. The exchange didn’t say why trading was halted, but in June, the U.S. SEC sued Binance and Coinbase over the seven tokens, finding that they were unregistered securities.
Whether ETH should be categorized as a commodity or a security is a hotly debated topic in the current U.S. regulatory climate. While SEC Chair Gary Gensler acknowledged in April that Bitcoin was a commodity, he declined to say whether or not Ether should be classified as a security, despite the CFTC’s repeated classification of Ether as one.
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