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Comment by moeadham | Hacker News Reader

All this will do is push US customers to self custody, and outside the regulatory perimeter of the SEC.

Bravo Gary. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

The point is to stop Kraken from offering an unregulated security, not to stop people choosing to stake their Lunas.

I think the point is to establish some precedent that what Kraken was offering actually was an unregulated security, something that might not have been completely clear before this. I doubt that the Fed is deeply concerned about Kraken beyond that.

>and outside the regulatory perimeter of the SEC.

I think that's the point? The SEC doesn't want an issue where Kraken loses all the funds because they didn't actually stake anything at all and instead were investing in tulip futures.

Are you suggesting that exchanges might be misappropriating customer funds? I find that incredibly difficult to believe.

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/12/28/ftx-used-200-million-of-cust...

I suppose that was sarcastic. Centralized exchanges are famous for misappropriating customer funds.

I hope it was sarcastic. At this point, are there any exchanges that aren't doing untoward things with their customer's assets? We basically have exchanges that failed doing this and other exchanges with ambiguous descriptions of what they have done that haven't failed yet.

I doubt it will push a significant chunk of these users to self-custody. Self-custody is significantly more complicated than leaving assets on an exchange—which is why most people don't do self-custody. I'm sure this will drive some to self-custody. But I don't imagine it'll be a very large percentage.

Is it tho? A MetaMask wallet staking directly with the protocols/ yield aggregators is easier than creating a kraken account and doing KYC verification.

> A MetaMask wallet staking directly with the protocols/ yield aggregators is easier than creating a kraken account and doing KYC verification.

It's not easier at all which is why people don't do it....

self custody vs. centralized exchange data would be relevant here. Instead of just saying “people don’t do it”. Because people do… and I would venture to say more people do it than keep their coins on a centralized exchange.

That may indeed be "easier", but self-custody requires a high level of confidence in your own ability to set things up properly and securely. And equally high confidence that your machine and wallet won't be compromised. I'd also say that getting to that point is difficult, unless someone is willing to play around with a test-net and not learning with their real balance.

There's definitely an appeal when it comes to having an exchange manage this all for you, even when they take a fee for doing so.

You can also just buy and hold a token like rETH too. This token gives you rewards from a decentralized staking network automatically.

Holding a token on a hardware wallet is very easy to do these days.

How do you get the coins to stake in the first place without creating an account and doing KYC verification?

This may come off as… impractical… but I don’t understand why.

The best way to obtain coins without going through KYC is by using the protocols. The most cost effective is running a filecoin node but there are thousands of ways of getting coins by participating in the ecosystem.

Right. I self custody most of my stuff, but I do stake a few coins with Kraken because the amount is relatively small and it's easier. Taking away this service is annoying.

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