The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) charged Kraken—America's third-largest cryptocurrency exchange by volume—with offering an unregistered security last Thursday. As part of a settlement, Kraken agreed to immediately cease offering interest-bearing "staking" services to U.S.-based customers and pay a $30 million fine.
But one SEC commissioner, Hester M. Peirce, published a forceful dissent, calling the SEC's action "paternalistic and lazy" and questioning "whether SEC registration would have been possible" given the murky framework the agency offers.
