Cryptocurrency prices experienced a significant decline yesterday following the accusations made against the KuCoin cryptocurrency exchange by the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and the US Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York.
The charges, which included violations of the Bank Secrecy Act and unlicensed money transfer crimes, led to a significant outflow of assets from the exchange.
According to the statement made by the CFTC, a civil lawsuit was filed in New York Court against Mek Global Limited, PhoenixFin PTE Ltd, Flashdot Limited and Peken Global Limited. These entities collectively operate KuCoin, a centralized digital asset exchange, and have been charged with multiple violations of the Commodity Exchange Act (CEA) and CFTC regulations.
Following these accusations, onchain analysis and intelligence company Nansen reported that a total of $1.7 billion in crypto assets were withdrawn from this exchange. In the last 24 hours, there has been an outflow of over $842 million in Ethereum and $938 million in EVM chains from an initial asset level of $6 billion, representing a more than 15% decline in assets held by the exchange.
In response to these developments, KuCoin announced a $10 million airdrop to its users. KuCoin CEO Johnny Lyu thanked all KuCoin users for their support and trust over the past seven years. Lyu acknowledged that some users experienced longer-than-expected wait times when making withdrawals on March 26 and 27, and apologized for this.
According to its official statement, KuCoin will launch a special airdrop event worth a total of $10 million in KCS and BTC to express their deep gratitude for user support and patience. “We hope that through this initiative we can express our gratitude for the support of our loyal users,” Lyu said.
According to the official announcement, the rules of the airdrop event will be officially announced within three days.
*This is not investment advice.