KuCoin, one of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges, has agreed to exit the New York market and pay $22 million as part of a lawsuit related to the regulations of crypto asset companies in New York State.
New York Attorney General Letitia James filed a lawsuit against Seychelles-based KuCoin in March, alleging that the platform offered cryptocurrency trading to investors without registering with authorities.
The settlement, which includes KuCoin’s agreement to cease trading securities and commodities in New York as of December 12th, emerged in an environment where U.S. regulators and law enforcement are pressuring the cryptocurrency sector for fraud, money laundering, and insufficient investor protection.
The settlement addressed in the lawsuit includes a payment of $22 million, in addition to a payment of $5.3 million to state authorities and the return of cryptocurrency assets worth a total of $16.7 million to 177,800 New York investors.
According to the latest data from the CoinMarketCap data platform, KuCoin ranks behind Binance, Coinbase, and Kraken in terms of factors such as asset traffic, liquidity, and trading volumes among centralized cryptocurrency exchanges.