AB 892: the staking hearing

On 4 February 2026 the Assembly Committee on Science, Technology and AI, chaired by Rep. Nate Gustafson, took testimony on Assembly Bill 892 — the Staking Clarity Act. Fifteen days later the bill passed the Assembly. It is the furthest any digital-asset bill has traveled in Wisconsin.

The bill did one thing: put in statute that digital asset staking, and staking as a service, are not the sale of a security under Wisconsin law, and define digital asset, node and staking so the question stops turning on interpretation.

The economic argument

Coinbase’s testimony made the case that staking is infrastructure rather than an investment product: stakers keep ownership and control of their assets, and rewards are paid by the blockchain protocol itself, not by a company. There is no management team deploying capital and no pooled investment.

On the consumer-harm question the company told the committee that in more than six years of offering staking nationwide, no Coinbase customer had lost assets through its staking service, and that a person is statistically more than six times likelier to be struck by lightning than to lose assets to a staking penalty. It also pointed the committee to guidance from the SEC’s Division of Corporation Finance concluding such services are not securities under federal law.

What WBBC told the committee

Our president testified from the creative economy rather than the financial one. She grew up in Mukwonago, works as an artist and community organizer in Milwaukee, and described the income most creatives actually live on: agency work, streaming, ticket revenue, licensing, royalties, modest returns — irregular, seasonal, and widely misunderstood by policy written for salaried workers.

The argument she made was that staking lets people with unpredictable income behave more like responsible businesses, not less — managing cash flow, reserves and runway. And that when platforms geo-block Wisconsin, the effect on a working artist is a statewide blackout on a tool that everyone one state over can use.

She put that against Wisconsin’s brain drain, and against a state that is home to Summerfest and Mile of Music: Michigan, Illinois and Minnesota were moving toward clarity while Wisconsin was not.

The opposition, which came from the state itself

Two organizations testified against. One of them was the Wisconsin Department of Financial Institutions — the agency that regulates this activity.

What happened next

AB 892 passed the Assembly on 19 February 2026. The Senate Committee on Utilities, Technology and Tourism recommended concurrence 3–2 on 13 March. The Senate did not take it up before the session closed on 23 March, and the bill died.

The question did not die with it. It now sits with a Legislative Council study committee whose charge is that exact issue, drafting the version that will be introduced in 2027 — and three of that committee’s six public members are community bankers or credit union executives.

The Senate heard it too

The companion bill, SB 885, carried the identical relating clause — digital asset staking and the state’s securities laws — and ran on its own track. Sen. Rachael Cabral-Guevara authored it, cosponsored by Reps. Neylon, Gustafson, Knodl, Tranel, Tusler and Wittke, with Rep. Ortiz-Velez added on 10 February 2026, which is what made the staking bills the session’s only digital-asset legislation with authors from both parties.

It was introduced on 27 January 2026 and referred to the Senate Committee on Utilities, Technology and Tourism, which held its public hearing on 25 February 2026 — three weeks after the Assembly committee took testimony, and six days after the Assembly passed AB 892.