Tokens of Liquid Staking Projects Survive in Crypto Market Plummet Caused by Kraken Settlement

The crypto market took a hit following Kraken's settlement with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). $BTC fell below $22,000 for the first time since January 21st, and the majority of Altcoins also dropped in price. Tokens of decentralized liquid staking protocols, however, were an exception.

The SEC started to take action on crypto staking-as-a-service programs, and Kraken was the first target. The exchange agreed to end its staking platform for US customers, and to pay $30m to settle charges from the SEC. The news first came out at around 7pm UTC on February 9th, and $BTC, $ETH, along with many other crypto assets, began to drop at that time.

Not all the tokens are victims, though. The SEC's ban on centralized staking service providers is seen as a bullish sign for decentralized ones. Starting from around 7pm UTC, too, the tokens of some liquid staking protocols, such as Lido ($LDO), Rocket Pool ($RPL), Frax ($FXS) and pSTAKE ($PSTAKE), began to go up, and the charts look similar.

$RPL is one of the best performing tokens of the day. Among the Top 100 tokens on TokenInsight, it's the only one that has a more than 10% increase over the last 24 hours.