KuCoin’s operator has been effectively shut out of the U.S. market after a federal court approved a Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) consent order that bars the company from offering U.S. users access to its platform.
The order, entered in the Southern District of New York, requires Peken Global Limited — the operator behind KuCoin — to pay a $500,000 civil penalty and prohibits it from providing trading access to U.S. participants unless it registers as a foreign board of trade. Crucially, the ruling removes a previous time limit on KuCoin’s U.S. exit, turning what had been a minimum two-year withdrawal period into an open-ended ban.
This civil action comes on the heels of KuCoin’s January 2025 guilty plea in a separate criminal case, in which the exchange admitted to operating an unlicensed money-transmitting business and faced roughly $297 million in penalties and forfeitures. Taken together, the two actions illustrate how U.S. authorities pursued the exchange on multiple fronts — pairing criminal anti-money-laundering enforcement with civil restrictions on market access.
The relatively modest $500,000 CFTC fine reflects that most financial penalties were imposed in the DOJ criminal case. The CFTC said it did not seek disgorgement, citing Peken’s cooperation and the forfeiture order in the parallel DOJ action.
Government filings show KuCoin had about 1.5 million registered U.S. users and pulled in at least $184.5 million in fees from those accounts. Regulators singled out the exchange’s onboarding practices as a key failing: KuCoin only introduced know-your-customer (KYC) controls in August 2023 and did not retroactively apply them to preexisting accounts — a gap central to enforcement.
The court also dismissed remaining claims against affiliated entities Mek Global Limited, PhoenixFin PTE Ltd., and Flashdot Limited.
With the injunction now in place, KuCoin’s U.S. operations have moved from a temporary restriction to a permanent shutdown, completing a rare sequential enforcement path that began with criminal prosecution and ended with civil market-access prohibitions. The case underscores increased U.S. scrutiny of crypto platforms and signals that regulators will continue to combine criminal and civil tools to police the crypto industry.
Read more AI-generated news on: undefined/news
