Regulators Take a Big Swing at Crypto—and Executives Vow to Fight Back

Here come the regulators. Right after I was last in your inbox, the crypto exchange Kraken announced it would shut down its staking services in the U.S. It also agreed to a $30 million settlement with the Securities and Exchange Commission over its staking services, which the agency alleged was offered and sold as an unregistered security.

Staking, for those who may be less familiar with crypto jargon, is a process of depositing tokens to be used for validating transactions on a blockchain that generates a return in the form of more tokens. Some crypto exchanges like Kraken and others offer to stake customers’ assets for them and later return some of the yield.