Bitstamp to Discontinue Staking Services for US Customers
Crypto exchange Bitstamp has announced that it will no longer provide staking services for customers based in the United States. In a message shared with Cointelegraph, the exchange said that Ether (ETH) staking will be discontinued as of September 25.
Bobby Zagotta, U.S. CEO and global chief commercial officer at Bitstamp, stated that rewards, as well as the principal, will be credited to users’ main Bitstamp account balances. He warned that it could take a few days for users’ balances to be updated.
Bitstamp charges a 15% commission on all staking rewards, with a monthly reward rate for staking ETH of 4.50%. For comparison, the monthly reward for staking Algorand (ALGO) is 1.60%. Other countries where Bitstamp staking services aren’t available include Canada, Japan, Singapore and the United Kingdom.
The decision to discontinue staking services in the United States appears to be related to recent legal developments. In early August, Bitstamp announced that seven altcoins would no longer be available in the country, including Axie Infinity (AXS), Chiliz (CHZ), Decentraland (MANA), Polygon (MATIC), Near (NEAR), The Sandbox (SAND) and Solana (SOL). These tokens were all deemed unregistered securities by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in June.
Ether, the native cryptocurrency of the Ethereum blockchain, is the second largest by market capitalization after Bitcoin (BTC). A major concern about the current regulatory environment in the U.S. is whether ETH should be categorized as a commodity or a security. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission has identified Ether as a commodity, while SEC Chair Gary Gensler said at an April hearing that Bitcoin is a commodity but did not specify whether ETH should be considered a security.
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