[Serious] I don't think Kraken being blocked from staking in the US is necessarily a bad thing.

"The Securities and Exchange Commission today charged Payward Ventures, Inc. and Payward Trading Ltd., both commonly known as Kraken, with failing to register the offer and sale of their crypto asset staking-as-a-service program, whereby investors transfer crypto assets to Kraken for staking in exchange"

This is directly from the SEC press release (https://www.sec.gov/news/press-release/2023-25). I'm not going to talk about whether the reaction was too harsh, or what options could have been.

What I want to say is that I don't think this is necessarily a bad thing, and I would even argue it is a good thing. Exchanges offer services like these because they can make money and benefit from them, much like banks do with savings accounts and High Yield savings accounts, the difference is that Banks are regulated and have to be able to show you EXACTLY what they are doing with their funds, these crypto exchanges are not regulated like that.

When you agree to staking you don't know or agree to know what they are doing with YOUR coins. And even outside that, the amount of crypto exchanges collapsing losing people's money while they are invested in gods knows what is a a massive cause for concern. Your money in banks has protection if they go bankrupt, and again, crypto exchanges do not.

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You may be thinking but why Kraken?

I personally think we should ignore that Kraken is reddit's sweetheart (and mine) and has a really good track record out of the equation, which I think we should because this will likely affect other exchanges as well.

What are your thoughts on this?

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For those out of the loop, read these 2 links:

https://www.sec.gov/news/press-release/2023-25

https://blog.kraken.com/post/17619/settlement/