One of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges, KuCoin, has agreed to exit the New York market and pay $22 million as part of a lawsuit brought by the state as part of its regulations on crypto asset companies. Attorney General Letitia James filed a lawsuit against Seychelles-based KuCoin in March, accusing the platform of allowing investors to buy and sell cryptocurrency on its platform without registering with the authorities.
The agreement, which KuCoin agreed to halt its securities and commodities trading services in New York on December 12, emerged amidst pressure from US regulators and law enforcement on the cryptocurrency sector for fraud, money laundering, and inadequate investor protections.
The settlement discussed during the lawsuit includes, in addition to a payment of $22 million, a payment of $5.3 million to state officials and the return of cryptocurrency assets worth $16.7 million to 177,800 New York investors. According to the latest data from the data platform CoinMarketCap, KuCoin follows Binance, Coinbase, and Kraken in terms of factors like asset traffic, liquidity, and trading volumes among centralized cryptocurrency exchanges.
