Coinbase bevestigt dat zijn uitzetdiensten geen effecten zijn

• Coinbase verklaarde dat zijn uitzetdiensten niet als effecten kunnen worden geclassificeerd door de Amerikaanse Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
• Paul Grewal, de Chief Legal Officer bij de beurs, verklaarde dat staking noch onder de Amerikaanse Securities Act, noch onder de Howey-test een zekerheid is.
• Grewal merkte op dat de beloningen niet worden bepaald door de uitwisseling, maar door het blockchain-protocol waarin de klanten investeren en tokens inzetten. 
• Eerder deze week dwong de SEC Kraken om zijn uitzetdiensten in de VS stop te zetten en de beurs betaalde ook een boete van ongeveer $30 miljoen.

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The largest crypto exchange in the United States, Coinbase, published a blog post on Feb. 10 stating that the company’s staking services cannot be classified as securities by the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). This blog was a result of the regulator shutting down another major exchange, Kraken’s staking services, after stating that the company failed to register these services as security offerings with the SEC.

Volgens de blogpost van Coinbase authored by Paul Grewal, the Chief Legal Officer at the exchange, staking is neither a security under the US Securities Act nor under the Howey test. Grewal added that “trying to superimpose securities law onto a process like staking doesn’t help consumers at all and instead imposes unnecessarily aggressive mandates that will prevent US consumers from accessing basic crypto services and push users to offshore, unregulated platforms.” 

Zoals eerder gemeld door Bitnation, de SEC beweerde in de actie tegen Kraken that staking involves customers giving up their coins to the platform. The regulator believes that Kraken “not only offered investors outsized returns untethered to any economic realities, but also retained the right to pay them no returns at all.”

“When a customer asks us to stake some of their crypto, they aren’t giving up one thing to get something else – they own exactly the same thing they did before. Staking customers retain full ownership of their assets at all times, as well as the right to “unstake” those assets consistent with the underlying protocol,” noted Grewal. 

It is crucial to note that the Howey test includes four elements that govern if an offering can be considered a security: investment of money, common enterprise, reasonable expectation of profits, and efforts of others. Coinbase CLO added in the blog post that the company’s staking services do not come under any of these elements and also, do not meet the “common enterprise” prong of Howey because assets are staked on decentralized networks. 

Grewal noted that “stakers are only connected by blockchain technology and they validate transactions through a community of users, not a common enterprise.” He noted that the rewards are not decided by Coinbase but by the blockchain protocol in which the customers invest and stake tokens. 

The staking services also do not come under the “reasonable expectation of profits” element because “staking rewards are simply payments for validation services provided to the blockchain, not a return on investment.” Moreover, staking also do not pay rewards based on the “efforts of others” because it is the protocol’s blockchain that governs everything. 

“The purpose of securities law is to correct for imbalances in information. But there is no imbalance of information in staking, as all participants are connected on the blockchain and are able to validate transactions through a community of users with equal access to the same information,” noted Grewal. 

Een belangrijk feit om hier op te merken is dat Kraken zijn uitzetoperaties in de VS heeft stopgezet en de burgers van het land niet langer zal toestaan hun activa in te zetten. Aan de andere kant kunnen niet-Amerikaanse ingezetenen hun cryptomunten inzetten. 

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