A significant investigation has been initiated in the United States against cryptocurrency exchange KuCoin and its two founders. During this period, the KuCoin token (KCS) experienced a decline following sales by users reacting to the news. Despite support from a segment of the community for the token, KCS saw a 2.83% drop within 24 hours. This week, KuCoin’s native token has suffered a decline of over 18% due to the impact of regulatory influence on the market. Trader sentiment has also decreased on the cryptocurrency, resulting in a 52.92% fall in trading volumes.
KCS Addresses Weekly Turbulence
As of the time of writing, KCS was trading at $11.96. On the other hand, the 24-hour trading volume stood at $4.1 million. The emerging downward trend has resulted in the erasure of a portion of the monthly gains made during the crypto bull run.
The price movement of KuCoin over the last 30 days does not seem to have been completely negated. Despite the recent drop, there is still a positive gain of 5.94%. Bitcoin‘s (BTC) rise above $70,000 and its ability to maintain this level has generally had a positive impact on cryptocurrencies.
Impact of the Lawsuit on KuCoin
On March 26th, the US Department of Justice faced KuCoin and its two founders with a lawsuit alleging unlicensed money transmission and violation of the Bank Secrecy Act. The accusation in the lawsuit was as follows:
KuCoin conspired to operate an unlicensed money transmitting business and violate the Bank Secrecy Act by intentionally failing to maintain an adequate anti-money laundering (“AML”) program designed to prevent the use of KuCoin for money laundering and terrorist financing, failing to maintain reasonable procedures to verify customer identities, and failing to present any suspicious activity report.
Following this event, on March 27th, KuCoin announced a $10 million airdrop for community participants. It was specified that this airdrop would be in BTC and KCS. The platform’s CEO Johnny Liu thanked the community for their loyalty following recent events and made the airdrop announcement.
While all this was happening, eyes were also on the Bitcoin price. At the time of writing, Bitcoin’s price was trading at $70,342, a 0.65% decrease. The price remaining above $70,000 seems to be positively received by investors.
