New Jersey's Bureau of Securities has cancelled the 2023 order that kept Coinbase from taking new staking deposits from state residents, wiping out the $5 million penalty attached to it, per CoinTelegraph. The notice is dated October 30 and carries the signature of the bureau's acting chief, Keith Alt. Coinbase told investors in its third-quarter filing that the regulator had flagged the plan on October 29, and chief executive Brian Armstrong told New Jersey customers that staking would be back "very soon", per CoinTelegraph. No firm reopening date had been named by the evening of November 2.
That last point matters. Coinbase's help page still listed New Jersey as restricted that evening, per The Crypto Guide, so the legal door is open while the product switch is not yet flipped.
The ban ran for more than three years, back to June 6, 2023, when New Jersey joined a multi-state action arguing that Coinbase's staking product amounted to an unregistered securities offering. The state's order at the time counted 145,270 New Jersey residents in the programme, with about $210.3 million staked as of March 29, 2023, per The Crypto Guide's reading of the order. Staking means locking coins such as ether or Solana to help run a blockchain and earning rewards for doing so, and Coinbase runs that process for customers while keeping a cut of the rewards.
One line in the October 30 notice limits what the decision settles. The withdrawal was made without prejudice and carries no finding on whether the original claims were right, which leaves the bureau free to open a new case later. It is a win, not a clean slate.
Why it matters
The cost of the freeze is now measurable. Coinbase puts the New Jersey shortfall at more than $15 million of rewards that state users missed out on since 2023, per CoinTelegraph, which works out to roughly $375,000 a month across the 40 months from June 2023 to October 2026 on a straight MarketRadar calculation. California, where a ban on new staking still stands, accounts for more than $89 million of rewards missed by its users since 2023 on the same Coinbase estimates, close to six times the New Jersey figure. Every reopening restores a revenue stream that the 2023 crackdown had switched off state by state, which is why each state decision moves the story even though no single state decides it.
The backdrop is a staking business already under pressure from prices, not just regulators, and that pressure dwarfs the New Jersey reopening on its own. Coinbase's blockchain rewards, mostly from staking, came in at $85.7 million in the third quarter against $184.6 million a year earlier, per BeInCrypto, a fall of about 54%, with $111.8 million of that year-on-year move tied to lower Solana and ether prices and $18.9 million more to lower reward rates, per BeInCrypto. New Jersey is not the first domino either: Alabama, Illinois, Kentucky, South Carolina and Vermont dropped their cases during 2025, per BeInCrypto, and the federal Securities and Exchange Commission agreed in February 2025 to drop its own lawsuit against Coinbase. The same compliance drive shows up in the exchange's Brazil licence push and its post-hack security tightening alongside Kraken and OKX.
The state map now
| State | Position after October 30 | Figure on record |
|---|---|---|
| New Jersey | Order rescinded, $5 million penalty dropped | More than $15 million of missed rewards since 2023 |
| California | Ban on new staking still stands | More than $89 million of missed rewards since 2023 |
| Maryland | Ban on new staking still stands | No state figure cited in the latest reporting |
| Wisconsin | Ban on new staking still stands | No state figure cited in the latest reporting |
| Washington | Case still open, staking allowed | $4 million fine sought, per CoinTelegraph |
What to watch
- The actual reopening: when Coinbase updates its eligibility page and app for New Jersey, and whether existing balances can be topped up at once.
- California, Maryland and Wisconsin: whether any of the three follows New Jersey, after Coinbase's chief legal officer named all four remaining states as next, per BeInCrypto.
- Washington: how the open case resolves, given residents there can already stake while the regulator seeks a $4 million fine.
- Fourth-quarter staking revenue: whether the New Jersey return shows up in the next filing.
- Market-structure legislation in Congress, including the CLARITY bill, after the November 3 vote, per CoinTelegraph.
Key points
- New Jersey rescinded its June 2023 Coinbase staking order on October 30, dropping a $5 million penalty, per CoinTelegraph.
- The withdrawal is without prejudice and makes no ruling on the merits, so the state can bring a new case later.
- Coinbase has promised a quick return for New Jersey staking, per CoinTelegraph, but named no date by November 2.
- New Jersey users missed more than $15 million of rewards since 2023 on Coinbase's estimates, against more than $89 million in California.
- California, Maryland and Wisconsin still bar new staking, and Washington's case remains open with a $4 million fine sought.
MarketRadar take
This is relief with an asterisk. New Jersey's exit shrinks the map of states blocking new Coinbase staking from five to four, and the $15 million missed-rewards figure gives the reopening a concrete value for the state's users. The without-prejudice wording, the missing reopening date and the four open cases keep the overhang alive. Ether traded at $2,257, down 0.76% on the day, and bitcoin at $77,075, down 1.41%, in MarketRadar's snapshot at 06:06 PKT on November 3, which underlines the second point: staking income fell in the third quarter mainly because token prices fell, so a regulatory win in one state helps access without fixing the price side of the equation.
