BinanceUS Withdraws All Staking Pools and Move Funds to Cold Storage

• Conor Grogan tweeted on May 9 that BinanceUS was beginning to log net outflows of its ETH staking service. 
• The move comes as decentralized exchanges gain ground on their centralized competitors.

According to the director of Coinbase, the main staking wallet for BinanceUS has withdrawn from all staking pools (includes $150M of ETH, $2.5M of MATIC, and assets like SKL and T) and sent all funds back to cold storage. 

Coinbase director Conor included a screenshot and a link to the Etherscan addresses.  

“Unsure why they might do this as Binance.US homepage says staking is still live Perhaps they are simply rotating wallets (If so the ETH staking queue will take weeks to clear)”, he wrote in a follow-up tweet. Binance’s terms of service were also recently updated on May 5.  

Conor added;

There is always a chance that this wallet is not actually BinanceUS operated as tagged. But I think that is unlikely as it deposited the majority of funds directly into BinanceUS’s cold storage. 

According to a May 3 report, both Binance and Coinbase saw $700m in staked ETH outflows, which they attributed to the rise of decentralized liquid staking protocols. Both Binance and Coinbase are centralized crypto exchanges, the top two in the world.  

However, since Ethereum’s Shanghai Upgrade allowed average investors to pool staked ETH. Blockchain data show that Coinbase’s staking platform has also endured its share of net outflows, with $367 million leaving the platform earlier this May.  

Binance, the leading cryptocurrency exchange by trading volume, has experienced a negative flow of $340 million in its staking service.  

In contrast, decentralized liquid staking protocols have witnessed a significant increase in deposits. Frax Finance and Rocket Pool, two major beneficiaries, have seen net inflows of $56 million and $68 million, respectively.