Coinbase Slams the Brakes on Staking Lawsuits: "Enough is Enough!"

The Crypto Giant Urges Five States to Drop Their Cases

Coinbase is not messing around anymore! The crypto powerhouse is straight-up telling California, New Jersey, Maryland, Washington, and Wisconsin to drop their lawsuits over its staking services, claiming these legal battles are messing with consumers and stirring up chaos.

In a fiery blog post, Coinbase, the U.S.-based crypto exchange that's all about the public, is calling out these five states, saying their actions are seriously hurting their residents. They're throwing down some serious numbers too, estimating that folks in these states have lost out on a whopping $90 million+ in staking rewards since June 2023, all thanks to those pesky cease-and-desist orders that are still hanging around.

"[...] the SEC and ten states sued Coinbase, alleging that our staking services were securities. Several of those states went even further by issuing cease-and-desist orders that immediately prevented Coinbase —and only Coinbase— from staking new assets for users."

Coinbase

But Coinbase isn't standing alone in the staking game. By late April, other big names like Kraken and Binance.US were also in the mix, offering staking services for a bunch of different cryptocurrencies, though it's a bit of a state-by-state roulette.

Coinbase is slamming these lingering lawsuits as totally out of touch with where the rest of the regulatory world is heading, saying that "continued litigation by the holdout states is more indefensible than ever." They're also warning that these legal battles aren't doing squat to protect consumers – they're just confusing them and putting them at even bigger risk.

And just when you thought it couldn't get any spicier, Oregon Attorney General Dan Rayfield throws a lawsuit at Coinbase in late April, claiming the company didn't do enough to shield consumers from unregistered and risky cryptocurrencies, breaking Oregon's securities laws.

Coinbase's chief legal officer, Paul Grewal, isn't having it. He's calling Oregon's lawsuit a straight-up "copycat" of the SEC's old move, saying it's just rehashing arguments that the federal agency has already ditched.