KuCoin’s Two-Year U.S. Exit Met a Permanent CFTC Bar

A Manhattan federal court barred KuCoin’s operator from U.S. traders on March 30, 2026, unless it registers as a foreign board of trade. The $500,000 civil order landed 14 months after Peken Global Limited pleaded guilty and agreed to a two-year U.S. exit plus more than $297 million in criminal penalties.

The plea looked like the bill that closed the American chapter. The later injunction is the rule that still governs who may sit on the book.

Peken Global Pleaded Guilty on January 27, 2025

Danielle Sassoon, then the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, said Peken, a Seychelles-based entity that had operated KuCoin since at least September 2019, pleaded guilty to one count of operating an unlicensed money transmitting business. The Justice Department said the firm failed to keep an effective anti-money laundering program, failed to know its customers, failed to file suspicious activity reports, and never registered with the Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network.

Between about September 2017 and March 2024, KuCoin served approximately 1.5 million registered users located in the United States and earned at least $184.5 million in fees from those users. The same dollar figure came back as criminal forfeiture. The company also agreed to a criminal fine of approximately $112.9 million, which is how the package reached more than $297 million in penalties.

KuCoin was founded in about September 2017 and, by the plea, had more than 30 million customers and billions of dollars in daily trading volume. The platform took spot orders in Bitcoin, ether, and other coins, and listed futures tied to those prices.

THE JANUARY 2025 PLEA TERMS

• The charge: One count of operating an unlicensed money transmitting business.
• The cash: $184.5 million in criminal forfeiture and a fine of approximately $112.9 million.
• The pause: KuCoin would exit the U.S. market for at least two years.
• The founders: Chun Gan, also known as Michael, and Ke Tang, also known as Eric, would leave management and operations.
• The personal bills: Gan and Tang each agreed to forfeit approximately $2.7 million and entered two-year deferred prosecution agreements.

Sassoon tied the penalty to a simple failure. The exchange, she said, had been used to move billions of dollars in suspicious flow, including proceeds from darknet markets, malware, ransomware, and fraud.

For years, KuCoin avoided implementing required anti-money laundering policies designed to identify criminal actors and prevent illicit transactions. As a result, KuCoin was used to facilitate billions of dollars’ worth of suspicious transactions and to transmit potentially criminal proceeds, including proceeds from darknet markets and malware, ransomware, and fraud schemes. Today’s guilty plea and penalties show the cost of refusing to follow these laws and allowing unlawful activity to continue.

Danielle R. Sassoon, U.S. Attorney, Southern District of New York, January 27, 2025 statement

KuCoin’s own statement the same week told global users that operations in other markets were “fully unaffected.” BC Wong, a Singaporean lawyer who had been chief legal officer, took over as chief executive. The U.S. book was already being wound down. A company recovery notice set a closing date of January 22, 2025, at 21:00 UTC-5, five days before the plea hearing, and told identified U.S. users to withdraw.

The $500,000 CFTC Order Closed the Two-Year Window

The criminal deal set a clock. It did not end the civil case the Commodity Futures Trading Commission had filed on March 26, 2024, the same day the indictment came down.

On March 30, 2026, the CFTC said the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York entered a consent order against Peken Global Limited. The agency described Peken as incorporated in the Turks and Caicos Islands and as the operator of KuCoin. The Justice Department had called the same operator Seychelles-based at the plea. The order permanently enjoins Peken Global from letting members or other participants located in the United States have direct access to KuCoin’s electronic matching system unless the Commission registers it as a foreign board of trade.

The civil monetary penalty is $500,000, due within 30 days of entry. The CFTC said it was not seeking disgorgement, and the court did not impose any, citing Peken’s cooperation in the criminal case, United States v. Flashdot Limited, et al., No. 24-cr-168. Counts II through V of the CFTC complaint against Peken were dismissed with prejudice. Claims against Mek Global Limited, PhoenixFin PTE Ltd., and Flashdot Limited were dismissed with prejudice as well.

That injunction has no two-year fuse. The January 2025 plea still required an exit for at least two years. The CFTC order is a second lock. It runs until Peken obtains a Commission registration order, which the firm has not announced. A 2027 lapse of the criminal pause would not, by itself, put U.S. traders back on the matching engine.

The civil number is small next to the criminal package. The constraint is the registration gate. Volume that left the U.S. book did not leave crypto; it moved to other venues that still take the order, on paper, from somewhere else.

KuCoin Marketed Itself as a No-KYC Venue to Americans

Prosecutors said the U.S. user base was not an accident. The March 26, 2024 indictment charged Flashdot Limited (Cayman Islands), Peken Global Limited (Seychelles), PhoenixFin Private Limited (Singapore), Gan, and Tang with conspiring to run an unlicensed money transmitting business and to violate the Bank Secrecy Act. KuCoin was also charged with the substantive offenses. Gan and Tang were described as Chinese citizens, then 34 and 39, and were at large when the charges were unsealed.

Until at least July 2023, the Justice Department said, KuCoin did not require customers to provide any identifying information. Employees repeated on public social media that know-your-customer checks were not mandatory, including in replies to people who said they were in the United States. In an April 2022 message on Twitter, KuCoin wrote, “KYC is not supported to USA users, however, it is not mandatory on KuCoin to do KYC. Usual transactions can be done using an unverified account-.”

A mandatory KYC program arrived in August 2023, after the firm had been told it was under federal criminal investigation. Even then, the process applied to new customers and to existing customers who wanted to keep trading. It did not cover existing customers who only wanted to withdraw or close positions, which prosecutors said the law still required. KuCoin never registered with FinCEN as a money transmitting business and never filed the required suspicious activity reports.

The indictment alleged that KuCoin received over $5 billion and sent over $4 billion in suspicious and criminal proceeds, and that the firm hid its U.S. book, including by lying to at least one investor in 2022 that it had no U.S. customers. Futures trading had launched in July 2019, which, prosecutors said, also made KuCoin a futures commission merchant that should have registered with the CFTC. Damian Williams, then the U.S. Attorney, said the no-KYC stance was “integral to its growth and success.”

Both Founders Took Deferred Prosecution and Walked

The department agreed to defer prosecution of Gan and Tang for two years from the January 27, 2025 plea, a term that runs to about January 27, 2027. They had to leave every management and operating role and each forfeit approximately $2.7 million tied to U.S. operations. The original indictment had exposed each man to a five-year statutory maximum on the conspiracy counts. Those charges sit in abeyance while the agreements hold.

Gan published a letter on KuCoin’s site the day of the plea. He called the outcome favorable and said the department had agreed to dismiss all charges against him and Tang “upon satisfaction of certain conditions.” He wrote that the resolution “reflects my lack of any intent to violate U.S. law or involvement in money laundering, fraud, or similar criminal actions.” He also said he had stepped down from all roles connected to the company and its affiliates, and he put his confidence in Wong.

As part of this resolution, I have stepped down from all roles connected to the company and its affiliates. This decision is part of the agreement with the DOJ and reflects my unwavering commitment to KuCoin’s continued success. I have full confidence in BC Wong and the exceptional leadership team.

Chun “Michael” Gan, KuCoin founder, January 2025 letter

In that letter Gan put the user count at over 38 million, higher than the “more than 30 million” figure in the Justice Department papers. Wong, who holds a Juris Doctor from Singapore Management University and a master’s degree from George Washington University, has continued as chief executive. He has not announced a CFTC foreign-board-of-trade application.

How KuCoin’s Fine Compares With Binance and OKX

KuCoin was not the first large offshore exchange to plead in a U.S. money-transmitting case, and it was not the last. Aux Cayes Fintech Co. Ltd., which operates OKX, pleaded guilty on February 24, 2025, to the same core offense and agreed to pay more than $504 million, split as $420.3 million in forfeiture and a fine of approximately $84.4 million. OKX received a 25 percent reduction off the bottom of the recommended fine range for cooperation. It also agreed to keep an external compliance consultant through February 2027.

OKX had an official policy against U.S. users and still, prosecutors said, served Americans who transacted over one trillion dollars on the platform. It also had a separate U.S. affiliate, OKCoin USA, that was registered with FinCEN as a money services business. KuCoin’s plea papers describe no equivalent licensed U.S. affiliate waiting on the other side of the exit.

Binance’s November 2023 U.S. resolutions were larger still. The Treasury Department announced a FinCEN civil money penalty of $3.4 billion and an OFAC penalty of $968 million, alongside a Justice Department case, and required a complete U.S. exit plus a monitorship. KuCoin’s criminal package is a fraction of that bill. The CFTC’s later $500,000 assessment is a fraction of KuCoin’s own criminal number. The lasting difference is the gate, not the zeros.

THREE U.S. RESOLUTIONS, SIDE BY SIDE

KuCoin’s U.S. fee pool, at least $184.5 million, was smaller than OKX’s $420.3 million forfeiture. The CFTC still wrote KuCoin’s American derivatives access as a registration problem, not a timeout.

New York Extracted $22 Million a Year Before the Plea

The federal cases did not open the file. On December 12, 2023, New York Attorney General Letitia James announced a consent order that took more than $22 million out of KuCoin for operating as an unregistered securities and commodities broker-dealer and for holding itself out as an exchange. The order required refunds totaling $16,766,642 to 177,800 New York investors and a $5.3 million penalty to the state. KuCoin was banned from trading securities and commodities in New York and from making the platform available to New Yorkers.

Investors were told they could withdraw over the next 90 days, then file claims. The federal indictment later cited that consent order, including the New York asset figure as of November 29, 2023. By the time Peken pleaded guilty, the state had already shut one door. The Justice Department and the CFTC then shut the rest of the country, first on a timer and then without one.

A Foreign Board of Trade License Is the Only On-Ramp

The CFTC’s 2026 order points at a specific statute, not a vibe. Under CFTC Regulation 48.3, it is unlawful for a foreign board of trade to permit direct access to its electronic trading and order matching system until the Commission has issued a valid Order of Registration. Direct access, in the Part 48 rules, means an explicit grant of authority to an identified member or other participant located in the United States to enter trades into the matching system.

That path is narrower than a full U.S. designated contract market license, and it is still a license. Peken would have to register as a foreign board of trade, meet the Part 48 tests, and keep that order current. KuCoin has not said it has filed. Wong’s public remarks since the plea have stressed global compliance and a user base outside the United States, not a CFTC application.

THE ENFORCEMENT CALENDAR

1. September 2017: Gan and Tang found KuCoin.
2. July 2019: KuCoin launches a futures platform.
3. April 2022: The exchange tells U.S. users on Twitter that KYC is not mandatory.
4. August 2023: A mandatory KYC program starts for new and active customers.
5. December 12, 2023: New York’s attorney general takes more than $22 million and ends New York operations.
6. March 26, 2024: The Southern District of New York unseals the indictment; the CFTC files its civil case the same day.
7. January 22, 2025: KuCoin sets a U.S. account closing date, then Peken pleads guilty five days later and agrees to more than $297 million in penalties.
8. March 30, 2026: The CFTC consent order adds the $500,000 penalty and the open-ended FBOT injunction.

The two-year criminal exit was always a pause with a date on it. The CFTC order is the document a compliance officer would actually pull up if a U.S. IP hit the matching engine. Until Peken holds a current Commission registration, that answer stays no.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is KuCoin legal for U.S. residents to use?

No for the global platform. The March 30, 2026 consent order makes it unlawful for Peken Global Limited to give U.S.-located participants direct access to KuCoin’s matching system without a CFTC foreign-board-of-trade registration, and KuCoin’s own recovery notice closed identified U.S. accounts on January 22, 2025, at 21:00 UTC-5, with a one-time 30 USDT fee on assets left behind after that deadline.

What did KuCoin plead guilty to in the Justice Department case?

Peken Global Limited pleaded guilty to one count of operating an unlicensed money transmitting business, not to a Bank Secrecy Act conspiracy; the March 2024 indictment had charged conspiracy and substantive BSA counts as well, and those company BSA objects were not the count of conviction in the January 27, 2025 plea.

What does foreign board of trade registration actually require?

Part 48 registration is a Commission order that lets a market located outside the United States grant direct electronic access to identified U.S. members or participants. It is not the same as becoming a U.S. designated contract market, and the rules still channel most customer business through registered futures commission merchants, certain commodity pool operators and trading advisors, or proprietary accounts.

What happened to KuCoin founders Michael Gan and Eric Tang?

Each entered a two-year deferred prosecution agreement, forfeited approximately $2.7 million, and left every management and operating role; the original indictment charged each with BSA conspiracy and unlicensed-money-transmitting conspiracy, counts that each carried a five-year statutory maximum, and the department said those charges would be dismissed if the men satisfy the agreement’s conditions through about January 27, 2027.

Disclaimer: This article is news reporting and analysis of public court orders, agency statements, and company letters. It is informational only and is not legal, investment, tax, or trading advice, and it is not a recommendation to use, avoid, or withdraw from any exchange. Readers who hold digital assets or face account restrictions should consult a qualified attorney licensed in their jurisdiction, and anyone considering a trade should speak with a registered financial professional. Figures, case statuses, and registration conditions reflect the cited Justice Department, CFTC, New York Attorney General, and KuCoin documents as published and may change if a court, agency, or the company issues a later order or filing.