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KuCoin, a leading digital asset trading platform, has witnessed a significant surge in withdrawals after the exchange’s founders, Chun Gan and Ke Tang, were criminally charged by authorities in the United States.
As per an official release, the two founders were charged “for conspiring to operate an unlicensed money transmitting business and conspiring to violate the Bank Secrecy Act by willfully failing to maintain an adequate anti-money laundering (“AML”) program designed to prevent KuCoin from being used for money laundering and terrorist financing, failing to maintain reasonable procedures for verifying the identity of customers, and failing to file any suspicious activity reports.”
Damian Williams, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, along with Darren McCormack, the Acting Special Agent in Charge of the New York Field Office of Homeland Security Investigations, unsealed the indictment on March 26. While sending a clear message to crypto exchanges operating in the United States, Williams said:
“Crypto exchanges like KuCoin cannot have it both ways. Today’s indictment should send a clear message to other crypto exchanges: if you plan to serve U.S. customers, you must follow U.S. law, plain and simple.”
As pointed out by blockchain analysis platform Spot On Chain on social media platform X, more than $500 million were withdrawn from KuCoin from the indictment of the founders, leading to a market-wide concern.
While initially, some users reported having problems withdrawing their funds from the exchange, Spot On Chain confirmed that the problem was rectified and the withdrawals are now enabled and working.
The top tokens withdrawn from KuCoin include 274 million Tether USD (USDT), 15,500 Ether (ETH), 50 million Ondo (ONDO), 12 million Fetch.ai (FET), and 95.38 million GamerCoin (GHX). The platform also confirmed in its analysis that the KuCoin hot wallet still holds more than $3.6 billion worth of assets on the Ethereum network.
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