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Kraken pulls roughly $1 billion of Ethereum from the staking pot

The crypto exchange Kraken wants to withdraw more than 555,000 ETH, about $1.2 billion, from the Ethereum network's staking pot.

By Finst News
• 2 min read
Kraken pulls roughly $1 billion of Ethereum from the staking pot

The crypto exchange Kraken wants to withdraw more than 555,000 ETH, about $1.2 billion, from the Ethereum network's staking pot. This is made public by the blockchain analytics platform Nansen. Kraken is taking this step after disputes with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

This request comes shortly after the successful "Shanghai" upgrade. Thanks to this upgrade, users can withdraw their staking rewards, and Ethereum completes its transition to Proof of Stake. According to Nansen, Kraken accounts for nearly 63% of all withdrawal requests. By comparison, crypto exchanges Coinbase and Huobi trail behind with 11% and 5%, respectively.

This decision is not surprising, given the legal disputes with the U.S. SEC. In February, Kraken was fined $30 million and was asked to stop offering their staking service for American customers. Kraken then announced it would remove ETH after the Shapella upgrade is completed. The stake represents almost half of the Ethereum held in staking by Kraken.

Ether sell-off remains unlikely for now

Overall, Ethereum stayed calm after Shanghai. Some experts expected a sell-off of the second-most valuable cryptocurrency. CryptoQuant, a data analyst, says the selling wave didn’t materialize because most Ethereum investors are still in the red. "Sell pressure typically comes when market players lock in huge gains. With staked Ether, that isn’t the case right now."

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