For a long time, people assumed bitcoin staking wasn’t possible. Not because it was a bad idea, but because the infrastructure didn’t exist. Bitcoin wasn’t built to support staking. There’s no native delegation, no smart contracts, no slashing conditions. So the best you could do with your bitcoin was hold it, hope it appreciates, or trust it to a third party who might lend it out in ways you cannot see. The problem is that Bitcoin is the most secure monetary network on earth, but also one of the least productive. More than a trillion dollars of BTC are sitting idle. Until recently, there was no credible way to make it do anything else. That is changing. With the emergence of new protocols, especially Babylon and other Bitcoin-aligned staking layers, there is now a path to earn native yield on Bitcoin without giving up control. You do not have to wrap it, bridge it, or trust a centralized intermediary. You stake it. And it works. This is not just good for the individual. It is good for the ecosystem. Bitcoin staking makes the network more useful and more secure. It provides an incentive for people to contribute to bitcoin-based security systems. It accelerates the growth of new Bitcoin layers, rollups, and applications. It allows restaking and shared security models to expand without relying on other chains. And it does all of this while preserving the core principles that made Bitcoin valuable in the first place. At Kraken, we have always believed that the future of crypto is multi-chain, but anchored in Bitcoin. Staking brings a new dimension to that thesis. We are excited to support it.