Crypto Takedown Explained

Last week, Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong went on social media with an ominous message: U.S. regulators would try to get rid of staking, a service that gives retail investors access to some of the safest yields in crypto.

A day later, the country’s top financial watchdog said it had reached a settlement with crypto exchange Kraken, which would stop offering its staking service there. Then, on Monday, Paxos said it would stop issuing new stablecoins at the request of the New York Department of Financial Services.

These headline-grabbing moves are the latest in a flurry of regulatory action that crypto investor and influencer Nic Carter calls “Operation Chokepoint 2.0” — a “sophisticated, widespread crackdown against the crypto industry” in the United States.

Today, we’re going to dive into this new regulatory crackdown and what it might mean for crypto writ large.