ARK Invest’s Cathie Wood on the staking ban: “U.S. exchanges are losing out”

In a commentary, Cathie Wood decried the ignorance of U.S. regulators as rumors of a potential staking ban for retail clients accelerate.

“Decentralization wins, U.S. stock market loses”

Today, February 11, 2023, Cathie Wood took to Twitter to share her views on the potential ban on staking services offered by U.S.-regulated centralized entities. She noted that this would hurt U.S. competitiveness in this emerging segment of Web3 technology.

So, activity moves to offshore exchanges or to self custody, self sovereignty, and self control? Decentralization wins. Great! Given regulatory arbitrage, however, US exchanges lose to foreign exchanges, not so good for US competitiveness in the crypto revolutions, in my view. https://t.co/1Lv4IqVsmn

February 11, 2023

In general, this ban will not ruin the staking currency ecosystem: users will simply turn to on-chain staking dashboards, or choose services in offshore jurisdictions.

In the long run, however, U.S.-registered exchanges will lose ground to their foreign competitors due to regulatory oversight, Cathie Wood speculates.

Thus, U.S. dominance in the “cryptographic revolutions” could be in danger.

The industry opposes the potential ban on centralized staking services on Ethereum (ETH) and other related protocols for proof-of-stake (PoS) currencies.

Exodus of stakers?

Some stakeholders have even compared it to the anti-bitcoin witch hunt that caused bitcoin (BTC) miners to move their devices out of China. Ironically, the U.S., along with Kazakhstan, were among the biggest beneficiaries of this process in 2021.

History could repeat itself: miners who prefer to use centralized services will most likely move their coins to other jurisdictions. As we’ve previously reported, UK-based fintech heavyweight Revolut has added ateking to its toolbox.

Revolut customers will be able to wager Ethereum (ETH), Polkadot (DOT), Tezos (XTZ) and Cardano (ADA), i.e. all the common proof-of-stake (PoS) altcoins.