Our weekly roundup of news from East Asia curates the industry’s most important developments.
KuCoin airdrops $10 million after U.S. SDNY indictment
Cryptocurrency exchange KuCoin is airdropping $10 million in Bitcoin and its native token KCS to users to try to convince them to stick by the exchange after a criminal indictment by prosecutors of the U.S. Southern District of New York as well as civil charges filed by the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC).
“I would like to express my gratitude to all KuCoin users for your support, trust, and companionship during the past few days and the past seven years,” wrote Johnny Lyu, CEO of KuCoin: “We will absolutely ensure the security of user assets as always and comply with regulations to fulfill our trust.”
The announcement came a day after KuCoin users withdrew more than $1 billion after news of the charges against the exchange. Lyu stated:
“Recently, on March 26th and 27th, some users experienced longer-than-expected wait times during the withdrawal process. As ‘People’s Exchange’ we feel a deep sense of responsibility for this inconvenience and would like to sincerely apologize.”
The exchange currently has $5 billion in total assets, down from around $6.3 billion at the beginning of the week. The exchange, based primarily in Singapore and China, has been accused by the U.S. Department of Justice and the CFTC of operating as an unlicensed money transmitter in the U.S. and failing to adhere to a Know Your Customer regime to prevent money laundering.
“As a result of KuCoin’s willful failures to maintain the required AML and KYC programs, KuCoin has been used as a vehicle to launder large sums of criminal proceeds, including proceeds from darknet markets and malware, ransomware, and fraud schemes,” prosecutors claimed. Since its founding in 2017, KuCoin has allegedly received over $5 billion and sent over $4 billion of suspicious and criminal proceeds.
KuCoin’s co-founders, Chun Gan…
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