RIA·DeFi
Refusal file · ETH staking

Why Ketju rejected Binance Staked ETH (WBETH)

Memo v1Published by Ketju Research

A registry memo, published verbatim and versioned. Superseded versions are recorded, never edited away. A rejection is a judgment for Ketju's client base and thesis, not a universal safety claim. Not investment, legal, tax, or compliance advice.

The memo

REJECTED. ~$7.1B, the single largest protocol in the survey with no memo, and it takes about a minute to resolve: WBETH is an exchange IOU. Binance holds the staked ETH. The token is a claim on a centralised exchange, wrapped so that it moves on-chain and therefore appears in DeFi dashboards alongside genuinely non-custodial assets. Every sovereignty property a client is paying us to protect is absent. If a client wants exchange-custodied staking they do not need an advisor, and they certainly should not be sold it as a DeFi position.

What would reopen the file

  • n/a — rejected

Facts on file

Verdict
Rejected
Exposure
ETH staking
Chains examined
Ethereum, BSC
Memo version
v1
Reviewed
Next review

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