The US stock exchange supervision SEC is increasingly criticized due to its U-turn during crypto staking and thus ensures even more uncertainty in the industry.
• SEC surprisingly withdraws from her hard attitude towards crypto staking
• undermout the legal certainty of the industry?
• Uncertainty in the crypto sector grows
SEC changes attitude to crypto staking
So far, the US stock exchange supervisory authority has followed Securities and Exchance Commission (SEC) a clear and hard line compared to crypto staking: The authority regarded many staking offers as non-registered securities offers and accordingly used complaints and punishments against companies such as coin base, bony or octopus. With its procedure, the US value paper supervision wanted to ensure that crypto offers are subject to the same rules as traditional financial products.
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At the end of May, the SEC surprised with a U-turn of its attitude towards crypto staking. A statement published by the SEC Division of Corporation Finance showed that certain crypto-staking offers will no longer be automatically regarded as securities in the future. In addition, proof-of-stake blockchains could no longer be subject to the registration obligation under the Securities Act. A surprising change of course that collides with previous SEC procedures.
SEC under fire: confusion grows
Based on this new assessment, the authority is now under massive pressure. Critics accuse the authority of contradicting himself and undermining legal certainty in the industry. For example, John Reed Stark, former head of Internet penalty, criticized the new interpretation of direct judgments. Accordingly, in procedures against Binance and Coinbase, specific indications were recognized that staking products are very well under existing securities laws. “This is how the Sec – before all eyes” – is the title of a detailed answer to the authority. He also described the sudden change of course as a “shameful departure from her investor protection mission”.
The Sec’s Shameful Abdication of Its Investor Protection Mission Continues (so this is how the sec dies – in plain view)
This Past Week, The Sec’s Division of Corporation Finance Proclaimed that Crypto-Related “Staking-As-A-Service” Products Were Not Securities, Even Though … pic.twitter.com/pzezilyyhz
– John Reed Stark (@johnReedstark) June 1, 2025
In fact, the procedure against Binance was terminated in May 2025 with a final conclusion, which means that similar complaints from the SEC will be excluded in the future, as Coinelegraph notes. The parallel procedure against Coinbase, which was continued in March 2024, was also discontinued in February 2025 – part of a larger course correction within the Sec.
Internal resistance at the Sec
There is also resistance within the authority. In an official announcement, Commissioner Caroline Crenshaw made it clear that the new attitude was neither in line with applicable law nor with the so-called howey test case law-the legal basis for evaluating securities transactions. “The analysis of the employees reflects what some want from a law, but it is not in line with the court decisions for staking and the long-standing Howey precedent in which they are based,” quotes Cointelegraph Clenshaw. And she added: “This is another example of the continued ‘fake it will we make it’ approach of the SEC in the crypto area – it acts in anticipation of future changes and ignores existing law”.
SEC colleague Hester Peirce also commented at the Bitcoin 2025 conference in Las Vegas, but was defending. The classification of a security is not dependent on the asset itself, but on the specific offer and distribution: “Most crypto assets, as we see them today, are probably not themselves. This does not mean that you cannot sell a token that is not a securities himself that is a securities transaction. Here we urgently have to provide guidelines.
Regulatory chaos instead of clarity
Although the SEC sells its latest steps as an attempt to create regulatory clarity – Hester Pierce emphasized, for example: “Today’s explanation creates a welcome clarity for stakers and providers in the United States” – many critics see the opposite: a regulatory mess. At the beginning of June, Clenshaw referred to contradictory behavior of the authority – for example in terms of ether or Solana. While you are supposedly not securities with registration obligations, this will suddenly be interpreted differently with new financial products: “How can it be that these crypto-assets are supposedly not securities with regard to the registration requirements, but are conveniently securities if a registrant sees the option of selling a new product?”
Editor finance.net
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