Bitstamp, a cryptocurrency exchange, will be discontinuing staking services for its US customers. As of September 25th, Ether Staking will no longer be available, according to a message. The exchange stated that customers will continue to receive staking rewards until the specified date, after which their staked assets will be unstaked. The rewards and principal will be credited to the user's Bitstamp master account balance. However, users are cautioned that it might take several days for their balances to reflect these changes.
Bitstamp currently imposes a 15% commission on all staking rewards. The exchange's website indicates a monthly reward rate of 4.50% for staking ETH, which can be compared to other rates like the 1.60% monthly reward for staking Algorand. This move by Bitstamp aligns the US with other countries that also do not offer Bitstamp staking services, including the UK, Canada, Japan, and Singapore.
The decision is likely a response to recent legal developments in the United States. Bitstamp had previously announced its decision to discontinue support for at least seven altcoins in the US These tokens included Axie Infinity, Chiliz (CHZ), Decentraland, Polygon, Near, Sandbox , and Solana. While Bitstamp didn't elaborate on the reason behind the move, it seems to correlate with the classification of these tokens as unregistered securities by the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in a lawsuit involving cryptocurrency exchanges Binance and Coin base.
The regulatory status of Ether, the native cryptocurrency of the Ethereum blockchain, has been a topic of discussion within the US The question revolves around whether ETH should be considered a commodity or a security. While the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has classified ETH the As a commodity, SEC Chairman Gary Gensler indicated during an April hearing that Bitcoin is a commodity, without definitively addressing the classification of ETH.
The discontinuation of staking services by Bitstamp in the US is likely influenced by these regulatory uncertainties and developments in the crypto industry.
