bakoning

U.S. federal prosecutors charged crypto exchange KuCoin and two of its founders with violating anti-money laundering laws on Tuesday, saying the exchange operated in the U.S., lied to at least one of its investors about operating in the U.S. and failed to both register with U.S. government entities and maintain an anti-money laundering program.

The U.S. Department of Justice said in an indictment that KuCoin and founders Chun Gan and Ke Tang operated KuCoin as a money transmitting business with over 30 million customers, but did not implement a know-your-customer or AML program until 2023 – and even then, its KYC program did not apply to existing customers. Neither Gan nor Tang were arrested, the DOJ said in a press release.

KuCoin did not register with the U.S. Financial Crimes Enforcement Network as a money services business, the DOJ indictment said.

Because it did not implement any KYC or AML programs, KuCoin "made itself available to be used, and in fact was used, as a vehicle for laundering the proceeds of suspicious and criminal activities, including proceeds from sanctions violations, darknet markets, and malware, ransomware, and fraud schemes," the indictment said.

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission also filed a suit against KuCoin Tuesday, alleging the company, which offers both spot and futures trading services, did not register as a futures commission merchant, swap execution facility or designated contract market. Its suit also charged that KuCoin didn't implement the CFTC's equivalent of a KYC program.

In a statement, Homeland Security Investigations Special Agent in Charge Darren McCormack called KuCoin "an alleged multibillion-dollar criminal conspiracy," noting it was one of the largest crypto exchanges.

U.S. Attorney Damien Williams said in a statement that KuCoin actively tried to hide that "substantial numbers of U.S. users were trading" on its platform.

"Indeed, KuCoin allegedly took advantage of its sizeable U.S. customer base to become one of the world’s largest cryptocurrency derivatives and spot exchanges, with billions of dollars of daily trades and trillions of dollars of annual trade volume," he said. ".. As alleged, in failing to implement even basic anti-money laundering policies, the defendants allowed KuCoin to operate in the shadows of the financial markets and be used as a haven for illicit money laundering, with KuCoin receiving over $5 billion and sending over $4 billion of suspicious and criminal funds."

KuCoin’s native token (KCS) dropped by 5% following the announcement. Bitcoin's {{BTC}} price dropped 1%, but has been volatile throughout the day and is trading around $70,000.

UPDATE (March 26, 2024, 15:25 UTC): Adds additional detail.

In less than 4 hours, this #crypto wallet turned $3 into $68,969!
0XREflection spotted this degen on-chain, the degen made only 1 trade & his meme coin PUMPED by +2,989,854.43%..
Every single one of you has that amount, all you need is the right information and the right tool.
This proves that anyone can make it in crypto, believe me you don't have to be a genius to achieve same or make a generational fortune in this space.
This is how he managed to make a fortune from literally nothing ($3).
He was able to buy into $BALLZ immediately when it launched and the coin grew to over 2m%
He snapped over 1% of the total supply then and now he is one of the biggest whale.
Here is how you can Archive same result.
• Identify other whales and smart money

I remember when I was growing up, then we would capture a bee and then tire some trade on it and set it free. 90% of the time they would fly back to the hive and what we normaly do is to just follow them with drone while using the trade as an indicator and the bees always lead us to the beehives.
On-chain data always show the trials of all activity's and if you can follow the right data, you have 80% chance of making a generational wealth.
If you are not an insider, It might be very difficult to follow up on new potential launchs but luckly every transaction that happens on defi is on-chain, hence. You can start by tracking market movers.
*Here is how*
Create a list of whales and smart money then follow them on debank or $ARKM and set alert to be notified when ever they receive a token or trade a token. This would basically give you an insight on what they are doing.
Now when you spot an activity, you should make some research to know what the token is about and other due diligence. Once it passes your investment check mark. You might want to buy. .. I will post my investment checklist, if you ask me in the comment section.
• Influencers are like bees which when followed, you might get to the beehive,
A lot of people always get burnt when they follow influencers, because they either buy too late after an influncer has called the project or they bought early but didn't take profit. here is how to follow them properly.
Influencers that are YouTube or X content creators will shill projects when they have bought or received the token for marketing.
Hence you can as well buy into the project once you have spotted them receiving the token onchain, but first do your due diligence.
So before the influencer start shilling, you have already get in and you might probably take part of your profit after the content is published.
I know you might be wondering how to find influencers wallet?.
Well you can do so on debank (debank is a web3 google) then search the name of the influencer you would likely find the wallet address on debank profile.
To stay ahead of other traders you might want to use bots
Bots can automatically buy into tokens when ever they spot new token in a wallet some can even front run other wallet in buy or sell. I will write another content in regards to this. If you don't want to miss out. Give me a follow and hit the like button and I will see you in the next one.

Do you have a question or contribution. Or is there another stratgy that you use to outsmart whales .. let me know in the comment section.