The IRS said that staking will be taxed, but they also compared staking with stock dividends. De-facto making Proof of Stake Cryptos to securities. Another mess in the US.

We have all seen the recent news of the IRS, tax agency of the US, officially claiming that Crypto staking will be seen as a taxable event. Which is actually not that much surprising as many countries outside of the US had already made that change, the US is just massively trailing behind when it comes to any kind of clearance of Crypto regulations. Also Proof of Work has been seen as taxable income a while back even in the US.

But while this gives a bit more of regulators clearance for Crypto and lessense all of the confusion about Crypto regulations in the US due to the incompetence of the US, looking further into the IRS statement you will also see that the IRS seems to be regulating Crypto staking a lot similar to stock dividends.

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Messari CEO explaining how the IRS is comparing PoS crypto to stocks

This is especially a bit bad for Crypto, as stocks are obviously securities. So it seems like the IRS is already going with the assumption of PoS (Proof of Stake) Cryptos being securities. All that while this is not clear at all from the perspective of the SEC, the actual authority in the US that declares securities and regulates them.

I think this just once again shows what kind of a crazy mess the Crypto regulations in the US are, with multiple regulators like the SEC, CFTC and now IRS going their completely own routes, while the legal better on whether Crypto is a security will probably not be resolved for years coming looking at the amount of lawsuits.